Shipping

Supply chain challenges are nothing new for businesses of all kinds, especially retailers. Rising gas prices have added fuel to that fire, increasing the price of getting goods to their destination. One emerging solution is hyperlocal batching and fulfillment, which reduces the distance goods must travel and the total delivery miles driven. Ultimately, this strategy…

Buying goods online is now easier than ever before — but customers expect a smooth shopping experience at every step. The e-commerce industry is growing at a rate of about 20 percent per year. In fact, it’s estimated that this year alone, it will account for $1.0 trillion in the United States. But how often…

As last-mile delivery services have expanded, so too have the demands and priorities of consumers. In a recent consumer survey, we found that 76 percent of respondents said that an unacceptable delivery experience would strongly or somewhat affect their decision to order from that company again. Poor experiences can cause shoppers to choose another online…

Amazon.com is testing a service that uses the company’s network of Flex drivers to pick up packages from mall-based retailers and deliver them to customers. The program, first reported on by Bloomberg, has been running since last year. Much like drivers for Instacart or DoorDash, Amazon’s Flex drivers use their own vehicles to deliver packages. They…

Side hustles and e-commerce have sparked a surge in drop-shipping. One report even predicts the market size value to grow to $476.1 billion by 2026. However, while drop-shipping continues to make its way into the mainstream, most people still have no idea what it is or how to get started. So, What is Drop-Shipping? In…

We’ve all been talking about how shopping patterns and, therefore, shipping patterns have changed since 2020, but what we should really be talking about is the effect that those changes could have on the environment. According to a report from Freightwaves, the total count of final-mile delivery vehicles on the road could increase by 36…

Amazon.com will let other online merchants piggyback on its Prime service to deliver goods quickly to their customers, reports CNBC. The company on Thursday launched a new service, Buy with Prime, that lets third-party merchants use Amazon’s vast shipping and logistics network to fulfill orders on their own sites, while also appealing to Amazon’s 200…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss an article recently published by Total Retail titled, “2022 Delivery and Retail Trends,” authored by Jay Sackos, vice president of Dolly. Many of the biggest trends in retail today have to do with getting products into the hands of customers…

Retail has significantly changed in recent years. Consumers were already moving away from in-person retailing before the pandemic hit, and it's a shift that has picked up considerably since then. For those remaining brick-and-mortar stores, technical advances have been employed to keep customers happy — and keep them coming back. Many of the biggest trends…

For small-to-medium businesses (SMBs), exceptional customer experiences are the key to building and growing a loyal customer base. Experiences like faster delivery options are attractive to customers, but as technological and cultural preferences evolve, it can be challenging for SMBs to keep up without sacrificing quality of service. As superior customer experiences can’t exist without…