Tag: Royal Mail

UK PAF review fuels industry fears of pricing confusion

Posted by | Feb 17, 2006 | |

Postcomm’s review of PAF has split industry opinion. While many recognise its financial importance to Royal Mail, others fear a repeat of the ‘fiasco’ which followed the deregulation of directory enquiries. Regulator Postcomm’s decision to start a full-scale review of Royal Mail’s Postal Address File (PAF) has sparked major debate in the industry. One side says ‘about time’; the other ‘why now?’. Originally created by Royal Mail to help postal delivery, the file – updated quarterly – has long since been adopted by businesses as a tool to locate, verify and clean customer addresses, and aid marketing. It is also used extensively within geographical information systems (GIS) to draw up location analyses. However, criticism is never far away. More than 12 years ago, the industry was in uproar after Royal Mail terminated all licence agreements with PAF bureaux and forced them to sign new contracts. Price rises of up to 250 per cent ensued. Meanwhile, the current review has been sparked, in part, by a rash of complaints over unfair pricing, and concerns that Royal Mail could exploit its monopolistic position.

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Postcomm acts to protect competition

Posted by | Feb 17, 2006 | |

Postwatch, the watchdog for postal services, welcomes regulator Postcomm’s proposal to fine Royal Mail GBP2.16m for failing to tackle structural weaknesses that could give the company an unfair commercial advantage over its competitors. Commenting on the proposed fine, Gregor McGregor, Chief Executive of Postwatch, said: “Having only been opened up to full competition last month, the postal market is immature, but developing rapidly. Building customer and competitor confidence and ensuring a level playing field are essential if the UK postal market is to flourish. It was essential that Postcomm take action to protect the competitive market and we are pleased it has. It is now up to Royal Mail to put in place internal structures that prevent competitors’ commercially sensitive information being used to gain unfair advantage. The amount of the fine is very much a matter for Postcomm’s judgement. Any fine has to be substantial enough to ensure Royal Mail take the action required. Postwatch would expect any future fines for anti-competitive behaviour to be substantially bigger.”

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Another million pound fine for UK Royal Mail

Posted by | Feb 17, 2006 | |

Royal Mail has been hit with another multi million pound fine by the industry’s regulator after being accused of securing “unfair commercial advantage”, it was announced today. Postcomm proposed a fine of GBP2.16 million because the company had failed to take adequate steps to make sure it did not gain an unfair commercial advantage in the newly-liberalised mail market. The fine follows a penalty of GBP11.7 million against Royal Mail announced earlier this month because of the amount of lost or damaged post. The Royal Mail hit back angrily at the latest fine, denouncing the decision as “shoddy.”

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UK Post Office: Life in the old dog yet

Posted by | Feb 16, 2006 | |

The Post Office has been forced to broaden its horizons in recent years. Having branched out of its traditional sector, it now puts as much energy into competing against the likes of Barclays and BT as it does into sorting and delivering mail. Following its expansion into travel and financial services, the Post Office is looking to become a major player in the telecoms sector, launching its own directory enquiries service earlier this month to complement its fixed-line offering Homephone. Post Office head of marketing Simon Carter said last week that further product launches, which could include mobile phone, broadband or voice over internet protocol services, could follow. The Post Office has the largest retail network in Europe with 14,500 branches and 28 million customers a week. But the business is still losing more than GBP100m a year, exacerbated by the fact that pensions and child benefits are now paid directly into bank accounts. In the past, the transactions accounted for 40% of Post Office revenue. Although last week Post Office parent company Royal Mail was handed a record GBP11.7m fine for 14.6 million items that were lost or stolen last year, it is estimated that now just 25% of the Post Office’s business is handling mail. The rest is made up of travel products, government services, financial services and telecoms.

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Royal Mail Home Shopping Tracking Study – Autumn 05

Posted by | Feb 15, 2006 | |

Table of Contents

1. Background 2
2. Summary 3
3. Conclusions 10
4. Research objectives 11
5. Research method 12
5.1. Omnibus phase 12
5.2. In-depth telephone interviewing phase 14
5.3. Interviewing targets and weighting 15
6. Omnibus research findings 17
6.1. The size of the home shopping market 17
6.2. The demographic profile of the home shopping market 20
6.2.1. Gender 20
6.2.2. Age 21
6.2.3. Working status 23
6.2.4. Region 24
7. Main telephone study findings 25
7.1. Products purchased 25
7.2. Satisfaction with home shopping 28
7.3. Online shopping 30
7.3.1. Length of time shopping online 30
7.3.2. Most likely time to shop online 31
7.3.3. What prompted last online purchase 33
7.3.4. Products purchased online 35
7.3.5. Number of different websites purchased from in the last year 37
7.3.6. Websites purchased from 38
7.3.7. Auction websites 44
7.4. Digital TV shopping 45
7.5. Catalogue shopping by phone/post 46
7.5.1. Length of time shopping from catalogues 46
7.5.2. Most likely time to shop 48
7.5.3. What prompted last catalogue purchase 49
7.5.4. Products purchased from catalogues 50
7.5.5. Number of different catalogues purchased from in past year 51
7.5.6. Share of customers by catalogue type 52
7.6. Shopping via direct selling 53
7.7. Frequency of key product purchasing and spend via the Internet and catalogues 54
7.8. Home shopping spend 56
7.9. Cross channel shopping 63
7.10. Cross channel shopping and browsing 67
7.11. Motivations to home shop 71
7.12. Reasons for not home shopping 74
7.13. Likely change in shopping methods 77
7.14. Delivery 79
7.14.1. Satisfaction with delivery companies 79
7.14.2. Delivery addresses 80
7.14.3. Importance of delivery service options 81
7.14.4. Amount prepared to pay for special delivery options 83
7.14.5. Returning unwanted goods 84
7.14.6. Companies used for returns 85

P:LibraryB2CRoyal Mail_Home Shopping Tracker Report 2005.doc

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