Note: Today’s post is part of our ‘Editor’s Picks’ series where we highlight recent posts from our sponsors that provide supply chain insights and advice. This article comes from FarEye and examines the challenges of large and bulky deliveries in 2022.
As online retail continues its impressive growth, consumers and retailers are realizing the importance of delivery and its impact on purchasing decisions. Retailers that offer faster, cheaper, more flexible and more sustainable shipping have a competitive advantage.
Obtaining this competitive advantage is a challenge for retailers of small and large items. However, with larger items like furniture and appliances, things get a little trickier. Special equipment such as larger trucks, tail lifts and carts may be required. Two-man delivery teams may be required and often must enter the home to deliver and install purchased items. Due to these additional resources required, providing fast, cheap, flexible and sustainable delivery of Big & Bulky items can be difficult but crucial, as more than 35% of furniture sales worldwide are expected to be made online from here 2025.
At the risk of losing competitive delivery advantages and a consumer or two, here are some of the top challenges Big & Bulky retailers face in 2022:
Long delivery windows
Delivery windows for larger and heavier items are generally longer than delivery windows for smaller items. At checkout, consumers may be faced with estimated delivery dates ranging from a few days to several weeks. Many furniture and appliance retailers don’t show consumers a delivery window before checking out, giving them only a delivery deadline. Worse still, if the delivery requires delivery personnel to enter a consumer’s home, long delivery times can be extremely inconvenient, as consumers may need to spend an entire day at home waiting for the delivery. come. With major retailers such as Amazon offering 2-hour delivery on small items from the point of sale, consumer expectations for delivery (regardless of size) have been reset. Recent supply chain bottlenecks have only exacerbated this problem, putting pressure on available inventory levels and creating additional challenges for retailers’ ability to accurately estimate delivery windows and to give consumers the certainty that their orders will arrive. Retailers can solve this dilemma and provide shorter and more accurate delivery windows through greater adoption of end-to-end visibility solutions that can enable them to be predictive and proactive in their supply chain operations and Communicate status updates to consumers. This is important for consumer satisfaction as 93% of consumers want to stay informed throughout the delivery process and 47% will no longer order from a brand with poor delivery visibility. Automated, accurate, and transparent communications between retailers and consumers not only benefits consumers, they can reduce retailers’ headaches by easing the pressures placed on customer service call centers by consumers who ask where their orders are, saving time and money – a win-win.
Delivery visibility
Once a delivery window is set, estimating the exact time the order will arrive within that window can be as difficult as setting the delivery window. Estimating delivery times for Big & Bulky items can be tricky. When consumers place an order, retailers may not have the large item in stock at a nearby store due to high inventory costs for large items. Delivery orders can come from retailers’ warehouses or even from manufacturers’ factories, far from the consumer.
To read the full article, click here.
