10% of Black Friday orders will be late, says LCP
As a result of Black Friday, 22 million parcels (worth over £1 billion) will be home delivered over the next week. A staggering 2.2 million of these potential Christmas presents will not arrive when the retailer promises.
During the Christmas period, 17 million parcels worth £695 million will not arrive when the retailer promises.
These figures have been estimated by LCP Consulting a specialist consultancy in business operations and supply chain management strategies. LCP also estimates that £75 million (7 per cent) of orders will be delivered late because of the delivery company or the retailer. £31 million (2.9 per cent) worth of orders will also need to be re-delivered because of a carded delivery (customer not present at time of first delivery).
LCP Consulting says that this only exacerbates customer’s frustrations with home deliveries as they get prepared for Christmas. Next day deliveries are expected to be up 15-20 per cent from last year, meaning that an additional 4 million parcels will be expected to arrive with the customer the next day. This will put additional demands on retailers during their busiest online sales week of the year.
Returns also being overlooked by major retailers
Despite a recent report finding that 70 per cent of customers rate the quality of a retailers’ return service as “very important”, an LCP report, released in November, found that many major retailers are not recognising the importance of a reliable returns service to the customer.
Stuart Higgins, Retail Partner at LCP Consulting concluded: “Retailers continue to pursue a faster and freer agenda which is simply placing too much pressure on their back end infrastructure and carrier partners to deliver. With 1 in 10 deliveries risking failure this Christmas, retailers need to ensure they don’t promise what they can’t deliver or the customers will simply find a competitor who can.”
IMRG estimates £1.07 billion online sales for Black Friday, with an average parcel value of £42.
The latest figures from MetaPack show that over the course of Black Friday 963,754 parcels were processed across its eCommerce delivery platform which compares with 660,155 in 2014. This is an increase of 46%.
The MetaPack platform integrates 300 carriers and postal operators and 3,500 retailers.
