by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Delivering affordable, high-quality products to the billions of people who live in poorly served or remote locations presents a huge opportunity for innovative social enterprises. Unilever is now sharing their expertise to help them create successful ‘last-mile distribution’ models.
For urban planners, retailers and logistics companies, the growing flow of products from manufacturer to consumer presents new challenges. What is the impact of increasing e-commerce in our European cities? And what can be done to facilitate this transformation of our shopping habits?
Last-minute rerouting, guaranteed deliveries within two-hour windows, drop-offs in places without street addresses. Parcel delivery companies have been talking about all of this for years. That this future has now arrived is no surprise. The million dollar question is who is leading the way… BCG took a close look.
City logistics makes an important contribution to the quality of life that people experience in cities. The liveability of cities is under pressure, partly caused by growing number of ‘last mile’ E-commerce deliveries. Various (f)actors involved in the last mile have led to smart initiatives in the sector.
It’s easy to envision self-driving trucks safely and efficiently carrying shipments down highways. But that’s only part of any product’s journey between manufacturers and customers. How will the new mobility ecosystem handle the whole trip, including last-mile delivery?
A lot of reports came out in 2017 on city logistics and last mile deliveries. What were our most favourite reports? The five ‘must reads’ for professionals.
Technology is driving a heightened level of innovation in product and service offerings in the last mile parcel delivery market, and is transforming the way delivery providers interact with their customers. Customers have ever-increasing demands for delivery to be flexible, visible and fast all at a low price.
Commercial traffic clogs city streets, contributes to pollution, and drives up the cost of doing business. But there are many ways to do better. Last year, McKinsey and Bloomberg New Energy Finance published An integrated perspective on the future of mobility, which outlined four trends that are rapidly changing passenger transport: electrification, autonomy, connectivity, and sharing.
An increase in e-commerce in B2B, B2C and C2C markets has given rise to a greater number of challenges around urban freight: increasing use of public space, pollution levels, noise, road congestion and safety. E-commerce results in more, and smaller, and time critical deliveries in cities. It’s clear that there is a need for improving …
Growth in e-commerce has led to increasing use of light goods vehicles for parcel deliveries in urban areas. A new paper by UK researchers provides an insight into the reasons behind this growth and the resulting effort required to meet the exacting parcel services offered by e-retailers which often lead to poor vehicle utilisation in the …