Home shopping lacks channels
James Roper, chief executive of International Media in retail group, hailed deliverance, a home delivery charter for electronic shoppers launched at the conference, as ¡§the biggestdevelopment in our industry in years¡¨.
Deliverance forms part of the Internet Shopping is Safe (Isis) scheme, established three years ago to ally retailers¡¦ fears that luck of trust was impeding growth.
Yet despite a lack of agreed service standards, recent growth has been startling. E-shopping was ¡§not sharing the retal bloodbath¡¨, Roper said. Year-on-year growth was 36% and the sector would account for 9% of all retail sales by the end of this year.
He predicted that 400m parcels would be sent to 24m UK e-shoppers this year and said that figures would reach 1bn in five years.
But he told the parcel delivery companies in the audience that they lacked the delivery flexibility to fully service this fast-growing market: 80% of them had no faciliyt for the customer to provide delivery instructions, 77% no Saturday delivery option and 46% no options at all.
Speed of delivery and reverse logistics were still serious issues, Roper added. It took perhaps 45 minutes for internet customers to browse and 15 minutes to buy, but delivery was still taking 10 days. ¡§And God help you if you have to return something.¡¨
Carriers could cut customer service costs by 30% and achieve a 50% reduction in first-time failures through a series of simple measures, Roper said:
„h offer a better range of delivery solutions
„h promote and explain the options effectively
„h explain that customers have responsibilities of their own.
But companies were still falling short. ¡§Many people met this concept as if we were trying to introduce leprosy.¡¨ Patrick Wall, MD of carrier selection software provider Metapack, said that five years ago, B2C was only 15-20% the size of B2B, but would grow to equal it in the next five years. ¡§There¡¦s an extrodinary growth opportunity, ¡§ he said
A few years ago, attempts to introduce Sunday deliveries had failed, Wall said. But more than half of B2C consumers were away from home midweek during the day, and the company¡¦s research had shown that 80% now wanted a Sunday option.
