End consumers’ delivery choice in an omnichannel e-retail context: a multinomial logit model

E-commerce is rapidly changing the behaviour of end consumers for purchasing and receiving e-parcels, leading to a significant increase in home deliveries. This phenomenon results in new challenges for cities such as more frequent, smaller, and failed deliveries and geographical sprawl, increasing traffic impacts, and reduced liveability and sustainability. In the new omnichannel e-retail context, end consumers can choose between several delivery channels, including crowdshipping, delivery to parked cars (into trunk), autonomous delivery robots, autonomous parcel lockers, and staffed pickup points. Each alternative has different implications for end consumers and cities. Although some studies have pointed out how end consumers make choices when faced with new alternatives, several aspects remained unexplored. This paper contributes by investigating end consumers’ preferences for multiple delivery channels through a stated preference survey. Several attributes are considered including destination location, delivery time and price, time windows, data protection, tracking and tracing service, potential damage, payment timeframe, flexibility, and level of sustainability. The findings highlight that end consumers have limited knowledge of new delivery channels and limited willingness to receive e-purchases away from home.