Investigating the main drivers of self-service parcel delivery preference through new service development approach

Abstract

It is estimated that 1.92 billion people purchased goods or services online resulting in an e-commerce volume of 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide in 2019 (Statista, 2020). The growth will accelerate even further in the future depending especially on the changing behaviors of consumers affected by the pandemic. As a result of the tremendous increase in e-commerce, cargo delivery services have faced significant challenges in meeting this demand. The bottleneck in their delivery services becomes a primary concern in the last mile logistics services. The shares of last mile logisctic’s have been exceeding 50 percent in the total parcel delivery cost (McKinsey&Company. 2016). Moreover, this change has affected environmental sustainability since the number of vehicles in the traffic increases carbon emissions and car accidents as well as related other city logistics problems. Developed countries such as the USA, France, Germany and Holland put into effect alternative new solutions which included selfservice parcel delivery services as well. Implementation of these solutions needs customer effort since customers have to pick up their packages from the pre-determined parcel delivery points.