Consumer body, Which?, have pointed out that one of the major drawbacks of shopping online at the moment are delivery problems. In fact, one in four of the people they surveyed reported having problems with deliveries from online retailers. 17% complained of late deliveries while 36% stated that the major problem was not being able to choose a convenient delivery time. A further 26% found that not being informed of the delivery time to be a difficulty of shopping online.
Big vs Small Companies
Big
companies are finding ways to overcome these delivery problems like
Google who are looking to dominate the market by introducing a same
day delivery service to use in partnership with other companies such
as Costco. They have trialled this in some cities in the US and are
now rolling the scheme out across other parts of the country. It is
easy to imagine what an impact this could make to online shopping if
they were to offer this service worldwide. Amazon, however, are
fighting back by launching a same day delivery service in the UK this
year where parcels will be delivered to the customer's choice of over
500 newsagents and convenience stores around the country. The
customer can then collect the parcel at their convenience.
With
huge distribution networks at their disposal, this kind of scheme
seems plausible for very large companies but what about small
businesses? Website practicalecommerce.com suggests that small and
medium sized companies need not feel like they won't be able to
compete in the marketplace these innovations will create.
They have
a number of ideas that could make same day delivery a possibility for
any company, regardless of size:
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For small or medium sized businesses, they do not think it is unreasonable to ask customers to pay extra for this service and for same day delivery to be, initially perhaps, restricted to certain parts of the country.
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With the 'paying extra' idea in mind, they also suggest using courier services which already offer same day delivery such as UPS or FedEx.
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Fulfilment services could also be used to reach a wider geographical area with a smaller number of products.
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It could also be beneficial for small businesses selling the same products to work together to help each other fulfil orders in different parts of the country.
Even
without providing same day delivery, smaller companies could utilise
the fact that delivery is something that concerns potential customers
by making sure their delivery system is efficient and displaying this
fact very clearly on their website.
This would be particularly
pertinent in the lead up to Christmas when people start to worry that
their gifts may not be delivered on time. Online
marketing campaigns could be created to
specifically target customers who are searching for last minute or
express delivery options as well as highlighting these aspects of the
business to people making more generic searches.
Problem Solved?
Therefore,
by picking out one area of concern for customers, small and medium
sized companies can compete with big business. Listening to consumer
concerns and monitoring buying habits can provide invaluable
information for companies to run very specific and targeting
marketing campaigns which are far more effective strategies for
smaller businesses.
