by Walther Ploos van Amstel
The emergence of e-commerce is associated with a rapid shift in the commercial footprint towards distributional-based consumption. Through the analysis of the geographical expansion, market coverage, and functional specialization of Amazon’s distribution network, research by Jean-Paul Rodrigue underlines that digitalization has a pronounced impact on distribution networks.
UPS and FedEx shares jumped on August 11 after both companies said they are raising prices to boost profit and help manage the strong growth of B2C deliveries spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic. UPS plans to apply holiday season surcharges of as much as US$ 4 a parcel for shippers that send more than 25.000 parcels a week …
Amazon keeps on expanding its delivery options. In 2018, it launched an In-Car delivery service for amongst other GM and Volvo owners. Now, Amazon is giving select Honda models access to Key by Amazon In-Car delivery, as well, so consumers can have parcels dropped right inside their car wherever they’ve parked. Also, Volkswagen is working on in-car delivery with ‘We …
Shipment Zero is Amazon’s vision to make all Amazon shipments net zero carbon, with 50% of all shipments net zero by 2030. Dave Clark, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations & Customer Service blogs about it on the Amazon blog.
Last-mile delivery has created a continuing flow of issues that couriers and logistics companies have been working on for a long time. Recently, retailers have taken the issue into their own hands in attempts to ease the last mile headache themselves.
Amazon presented good results for 2018 despite increasing cost of fulfillment. Cost, as a percentage of sales, increased from 21% in 2017 to 24% in 2018. In 2011 fulfillment cost were only 11% of sales. US market is profitable, international not yet.