What’s the point of the collection point? - A case study in Gothenburg

Abstract

It not uncommon to read things such as “New record for E-commerce this year, again” in headlines of newspapers. In the case of Sweden, collection and delivery points, CDP's, are the most common way of delivering parcels. During 2018, new headlines started to appear in the newspapers, saying that stores becomes reluctant to operate as CDP's, mainly due to inefficiencies and poor financial results. Simultaneously, increased consumption and parcel volumes are correlated, raising the question of how these two will go together. It increases the interest of investigating how the CDP's are performing, what are the reasons for operating a CDP and what can different carriers do to increase the attractiveness of operating CDP's. Through a combined method case study, semi-structured interviews and Points Allocation method, the question of why one operates a CDP is investigated. The data is collected in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, during the spring of 2019. The study concludes that corner shops and grocery stores have different motives for operating a CDP. The most important reasons for operating a CDP are to increase cross-selling of other products, followed by increased service level for the customers and increased income from the compensation of handling the parcels. No environmental reasons were found, while being used as one of the benefits of the solution by other scholars. An increased knowledge in this area helps improve and optimize the existing CDP networks, the incentive structures and aid in choosing locations, as well as finding new delivery solutions.