La logistics ofE-commerce represents a key factor in increasing the competitiveness business and improve customer service. It is technologically advanced and fast, a key factor for the growth, digitization and competitiveness of companies on the domestic and international stage. Therefore, a fundamental element of the relationship with the consumer.
And the end customer is one of the two areas of focus of the Netcomm project "Delivery Index”, which, in collaboration with participating sector operators, will survey Italian e-commerce shipments on a monthly basis and analyze the behavior of a sample of online consumers.
The dropshipping phenomenon and the management of virtual warehouses
New technologies, the use of data and the flexibility of logistics models allow today the so-called dropshipping: companies can thus sell to the end user a product that they do not physically possess in stock, but which will be shipped directly by the supplier (dropshipper) once the sale has been concluded. In this way, all processes related to shipping, including product packaging, are the responsibility of the supplier and not of the business, which can thus expand its catalog without having to worry about many after-sales aspects.
Moreover, today enterprises can manage virtual warehouses of products delocalized in the shops, thus being able to deliver a product from the shop closest to the customer, who, in turn, benefits from a greater speed of service. Finally, logistics can be adapted according to the logic of optimizing the production cycle, product perishability and customer service.
The latter represents the fulcrum of the entire process. In fact, especially following the advent of the smartphone, today it is the customer who is at the helm of the logistics revolution: accessibility to the physical product is nothing more than a derivative of accessibility to product information.
Logistics in e-commerce: new business models
In a thriving market, where shipment volumes continue to grow (monthly deliveries of products purchased online in Italy were more than 30 million in 2022), many operators have recently entered with new business models, expanding the role of intermediaries in deliveries. Previously, the seller could only refer to traditional operators, such as couriers or carriers, brokers or warehouse operators. Today, however, new warehouse operators specializing in e-commerce are establishing themselves, large retailers and marketplaces that become logistics operators, as well as new forms of intermediation for smaller companies. With greater competition, therefore, both the options and the intermediaries, the delivery platforms and the means multiply.
As pointed out by Robert Smooth, president of Netcomm, “Today we are witnessing what could be defined as a 'delivery war': there is strong competition between the big delivery players, a real 'price war', triggered by competition on volumes. On the contrary, the smaller logistics players play a different and more multifaceted game, in which proximity, size, investments and specialization are all crucial aspects for their competitiveness".
