How E-Commerce has affected the Courier Industry?

Within the past decade or so, the e-commerce industry saw huge growth, and e-commerce giants such as Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, etc have completely turned things around and have a major influence on how people are purchasing goods. 

Prior to the rise of these e-commerce giants, people used to prefer buying things and goods in person than buying them online, however, now people prefer buying the same things and goods online. With the e-commerce industry, another industry that is affected by the increasing trend toward online shopping is the courier and delivery industry who have the job of delivering all the orders that people make online. 

There are now tons of different courier companies available across the world that offer the job of delivering the products and it can be difficult to find the courier services that best suit your needs.

Let's have a closer look at how the online shopping and e-commerce industry has affected the courier and delivery services industry across the world.

Shift from B2B to B2C Services

Prior to the rise of e-commerce businesses and industry, there were only a handful of services that the courier companies had to do and those were mostly focused around B2B or Business-to-Business deliveries where the courier companies had to transport goods from one business to another and that was pretty much it.

However, with the rapid growth of the e-commerce industry and the increase in the number of e-commerce websites and services, there came a huge shift in the services of courier companies, shifting from B2B to B2C or Business-to-Customer deliveries. A huge number of orders are made on a daily basis on e-commerce websites from various locations and this means a huge number of parcels to be delivered from businesses to customers across various locations for these courier companies. This huge volume of orders to be delivered across various locations means that delivery vehicles are out on the roads, out at sea, or in the air for an increased period of time.

Courier-Customer Relationship

In addition to this, the relationship between the courier companies and customers has also been changed. The customers now expect that the courier companies should deliver the parcels as fast as possible and this was a difficult thing to adapt for courier companies in the start and to make sure that the parcels were delivered on time, the companies had to rush everything and meanwhile doing so, some parcels would get damaged but the companies have now adapted to this change and offer very fast delivery services, even offer the same-day delivery services in big metropolitans.

Adapting to the Demands of Customers

Companies such as Amazon and eBay are offering their customers very quick services such as Amazon Prime offering next day and sometimes same-day delivery which can cause problems for the courier companies as if they are not able to deliver the order in time then it would result in both the customers and e-commerce company getting unhappy.

The courier industry is adapting to this by increasing more outlets across the countries and cities, decreasing the delivery times, and adding reviews to monitor the customer satisfaction level.

Increase No. of Companies and Bulk Deliveries

With a huge number of e-commerce websites available on the internet, a customer often orders different things from different websites and it turns out that multiple courier companies deliver multiple parcels to the same customers. That's how things have changed since the e-commerce industry started to grow.

The courier industry had to adapt to this and there are now a huge number of both domestic and international courier companies such as The Professional Couriers, TCS, FedEx, DHL, GATI, Emirates Post, etc. When the focus was on B2B services then only a handful of courier companies were enough to get the job done but with e-commerce websites flourishing ​and the focus shifting towards B2C services, the number of courier companies and bulk deliveries across various areas have increased substantially.

Before the introduction of online shopping and e-commerce websites, the courier industry was simple and there were only a few companies both domestically and internationally focusing on just businesses mostly with little to no competition between the courier companies but since the introduction of online shopping and its growth with increasing time, the completion has increased and so has the number of courier & delivery service providers across the globe.