International competition is hotting up in the eCommerce market. With that in mind, we thought it was high time to find out more about the key priorities for retailers in the UK, France and Germany and commissioned Forrester Consulting to survey over 100 leading retailers in these countries.

Retailers are increasingly recognising the importance of delivery as the final and most critical mile in the consumer journey. This is making multi-carrier delivery strategies that give the flexibility to best serve customer demand almost the norm for retailers. In fact, the majority of European and UK retailers (UK – 91%, Germany – 91%, France – 74%) are working with multiple carriers in order to better to serve their global customer bases.

Delivery is becoming key to the brand values that retailers are building online. Providing a more convenient and personalised delivery service to customers is essential to improving customer loyalty. According to the research, 85% of UK retailers reported measurable improvement of customer satisfaction thanks to them offering multiple delivery options, this was followed by 79% of respondents in Germany and 76% in France.

And this realisation is driving a new wave of investment in multi-carrier delivery services in Europe. A large percentage of French (76%) and German retailers (76%) expect investment in delivery processes to increase in the coming years.

With European retailers expecting an increase in cross-border eCommerce, organisations across all three markets are increasingly viewing retailers in other countries as direct online competitors. This is particularly the case in France, where 59% of the surveyed organisations share this view, followed by the UK (47%) and Germany (36%).

While international sales are adding to the complexity of fulfilment operations, consumers’ demand for more choice and convenience in domestic markets is driving the adoption of alternative delivery services, with some interesting national variations.

UK retailers are allocating double the funding for delivery to remote locker locations (68%) and alternative collection points (56%), compared to France (32% and 35%) and Germany (27% and 24%). These differences indicate different levels of maturity of eCommerce delivery services across European markets. For instance, in Germany delivery locker networks are more advanced compared to other countries in Europe.

This research shows that the retail and delivery industries are coming together as retailers are increasingly adopting multi-carrier strategies to utilise the expertise of each carrier and provide a better service to shoppers. As retailers are looking to boost competitive advantage on a national and global scale, providing more convenience and choice in delivery services will be critical to making or breaking customer loyalty.

To be able to survive in this highly competitive eCommerce market, retailers will need to develop robust multi-carrier capabilities and enable exciting innovations that put the customer in control of their delivery experience.

 

By Angela O’Connell, Marketing and Strategy Director of MetaPack. 

PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.

comments powered by Disqus