Home delivery strategy, tactics and performance is one of the most hotly-debated areas of logistics. The pandemic has increased the importance of home delivery, but also decreased the quality of home delivery performance. As logistics professionals, we can dive into the data to understand how we are performing operationally and rationalize the results against all of the last-mile challenges every retailer has been facing, but what do consumers actually think?
A report published by IBM states that the pandemic has powered the shift away from stores to online shopping by close to five years. Data from the U.S. Commerce Department shows that online retail sales jumped 32.4% year-on-year in 2020 with a 39% increase in Q1 2021. With more and more people shopping online retailers […]
E-commerce sales have continued to soar in 2021. The National Retail Federation projects 2021 non-store and online sales will grow 18-23 percent to $1.09-1.13 trillion, and many retailers should expect significantly more e-commerce orders during peak season. With the carrier capacity crunch and other challenges looming large, seamlessly fulfilling all those orders will be no easy task for many merchants.
Before digital transformation revolutionized last mile delivery in grocery retail, one of my favorite activities was going to the supermarket with my family. Hand-picking items, pushing the shopping cart, driving home with the bags, and carrying them up the stairs was quite the Sunday afternoon activity. Fast-forward to the present day: we still shop together […]
During most of the pandemic, convenience stores were considered an essential business and were allowed to remain open. But Casey’s General Stores was, arguably, the most “essential” of all the convenience store chains. The company has traditionally located its stores in smaller towns and rural communities not served by national-chain convenience stores. Last year’s annual […]
The gig economy and its on-demand armies of drivers have moved people and food for years, but many retailers still hesitate to tap into Uber, Postmates and other companies to quickly move orders from stores to local customers’ doorsteps. Look for this hesitancy to decline as more retailers continue to join the likes of Target […]
Five Forces Reshaping Logistics as We Know it Because warehousing and transportation represent significant cost centers, intelligent logistics decisions are critical. And, more than ever, these decisions have to be made on the fly, in real-time. As logistics managers grapple with their own challenges, including labor shortages and emerging commodity marketplaces, the logistics function has […]