Do e-commerce customers change their preferred last-mile delivery based on its sustainability impact?

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore if e-commerce customers change their preferred last-mile delivery, when they are provided with additional information on the environmental and social sustainability impact of the available last-mile delivery options.Design/methodology/approachWe conduct a stated-preference survey and apply McNemar test on the collected data.FindingsThe results show that displaying the environmental and social impacts of last-mile deliveries influences E-commerce customers, and generally makes them more likely to choose a more sustainable last-mile delivery.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitations are (1) the possible inconsistency between participants' intentions stated in the survey and their actual behaviour in real life and (2) the possibility of participants denying socially undesirable behaviours. Further research can study e-commerce customers' real behaviour.Practical implicationsE-retailers and logistics companies could implement transparent information sharing on the delivery sustainability impact on all three sustainability pillars.Social implicationsThe suggested transparent information sharing has the potential to change customers' behaviours towards more sustainable deliveries.Originality/valueWe provide a new approach in investigating customers' preferences on last-mile deliveries, by giving E-customers the chance of making choices between different deliveries, not only based on the economic factors (as in common practice nowadays) but also based on the environmental and social factors.

Segmentation of the Young Elderly Based on Technology Readiness

“…This includes comparing the environmental impact of brick-and-mortar retail channels with online channels (Bertram & Chi, 2018;Pålsson, Pettersson, & Winslott Hiselius, 2017;P. Van Loon, McKinnon, Deketele, & Dewaele, 2014;Weber et al, 2009), sustainability in e-commerce packaging (Escursell, Llorach, & Roncero, 2020), sustainability of e-commerce logistics (Mangiaracina, Marchet, Perotti, & Tumino, 2015), lifecycle analysis of different fulfilment channel types (Patricia Van Loon, Deketele, Dewaele, McKinnon, & Rutherford, 2015), ecommerce customers' last-mile delivery preferences based on the sustainability impact (Ignat & Chankov, 2020), and product returns' effect on business, society, and the environment (Frei, Jack, & Brown, 2020). While these contributions are diverse in the topics they address and the methods applied, they have one important denominator in common: they address or can be related to specific segments or phases of the e-commerce value chain.…”

Assessing the Effects of Delivery Attributes on E-Shopping Consumer Behaviour

“…However, the factors influencing delivery services should be known to fulfil customers' expectations and needs [3]. The most common delivery factors reported in the literature are delivery time [5,[7][8][9], delivery reception, and return possibility [7]. Nonetheless, e-consumer behaviour plays a vital role in e-commerce [10], once urban freight policies and practices require understanding how the e-consumers react to it [11].…”

“…Next, we used artificial neural networks to identify patterns regarding the effects of delivery attributes on e-shopping consumer behaviour. The use of these techniques brings novelty to this study since the usual approaches found in the literature are discrete choice modelling [6][7][8][9][18][19][20][21][22], conjoint analysis [8], cluster analysis [8,23], the mixed structural equation model [10], and statistical tests [5].…”

E-commerce effects for the sustainable development goals

“…In using pickup points, the buyer picks up his order at a convenient time for him. Informing the environmental and social impacts of last mile delivery affects e-commerce customers and encourages them to choose more sustainable last-mile delivery [21].…”