A delivery man rides his bicycle past a store in New York City.
Image of Michael M. Santiago / Getty
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Image of Michael M. Santiago / Getty
A delivery man rides his bicycle past a store in New York City.
Image of Michael M. Santiago / Getty
On the busiest mailing week of year, time is running out to buy holiday gifts online. Or is it?
More and more stores are doing hot deals with delivery companies like Uber, DoorDash, and Postmates to get your holiday gift delivered to you within hours. They’re after what was once the holy grail of online shopping: same-day delivery.
On Fridays, DoorDash announced a partnership with JCPenney later cooperate at the beginning of the year with PetSmart. Uber has cooperate with BuyBuy Baby and UPS’s Roadie with Abercrombie & Fitch, while Instacart has been delivered for Dick’s Sportswear.
“It’s an instant gratification option when needed, creating a sense of urgency in situations where time is of the essence,” says Prama Bhatt, chief digital officer at Ulta Beauty.
Retail chain last month partner with DoorDash to test same day delivery hits the busiest shopping season of the year. In six cities, including Atlanta and Houston, shoppers can pay $9.95 to have Ulta beauty products delivered to their door.
With that additional price tag, Ulta and others are targeting a fairly niche audience of people who can’t or don’t want to go to stores but also want same-day delivery instead of waiting for two-day delivery. popular today.
Food delivery opens the way
Food delivery boomed during the pandemic shutdown last year, as millions of new shoppers turned to apps for grocery and takeout delivery, which they could have door-to-door. home for a few hours or minutes.
Now, shoppers are starting to expect ultra-fast delivery, said Mousumi Behari, digital retail strategist at consulting firm Avionos.
“If you can get your food and groceries quick,” she says, “why can’t you buy the makeup kit you order for your niece or the basketball you order for your son?”
Most stores can’t afford their home delivery staff
Same-day delivery requires an army of delivery people willing to use their cars, bikes, and even their feet to deliver those basketballs or makeup kits to the many shoppers in the area. different locations. Simply put, it’s expensive and complicated.
Giants like Walmart and Amazon of course solved this puzzle with their own team of drivers. Target buying Shipping company Shipt. But for most retailers, their own last-mile logistics network is impractical.
“Your solution is to partner with someone who already has a delivery and can do it for less than you,” said Karan Girotra, professor of operations and technology at Cornell University.
It’s Extra Dollars for Everyone: Stores, Drivers, Apps
For stores, SSame-day delivery offers a way to continue making money when few people can come in person, like they did during the pandemic.
For drivers, it’s an additional delivery option beyond rides or takeout, where demand drops and flows at different times.
For apps, it’s a way to grow and try to solve their fundamental challenge: companies like Uber or Instacart have yet to deliver consistent profits.
“The only way to profitability is … if they take a large portion of everything delivered to your house,” says Girotra. “The more you deliver, the cheaper each delivery is… because you can bundle deliveries, you can pack more things in the same route.”
And these tricks become incredibly important during the frenetic season of shopping and last-minute deliveries.
