What’s Ahead for Last-Mile Delivery in 2020

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Delivery is emerging as a competitive advantage for local retailers. In fact, in September 2019, Onfleet surveyed 1,000 US consumers to gather their impressions on online versus local store shopping and delivery expectations. Seventy-six percent said they would be more inclined to order from local stores rather than from Amazon if they could get same-day delivery.

With that in mind, here are some delivery trends we’re expecting for 2020.

5 Business Models for On-Demand Delivery

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In the on-demand food delivery vertical alone, revenue is expected to reach $94 billion this year. Other verticals, like beauty, parking, health, shipping, and marijuana, are seeing significant gains, as well. Although the space is maturing, investors are still seeing great growth opportunities. Any number of on-demand delivery startups has the potential to take over the space if it continues to grow as its current pace.

To understand where that growth might occur, we need to take a step back and examine which business models are proving most successful in the on-demand delivery space and how startups are implementing those business models for financial gain.

FedEx Stops Ground Deliveries for Amazon, Signaling Delivery War to Come

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For FedEx as for the many other companies and industries Amazon has decimated over the past 20 years, the problem in confronting Amazon may turn out to be one of margins. While FedEx needs a profitable delivery business to survive, Amazon can afford to lose money on delivery and make it up with relatively free-flowing profits from Amazon Web Services and its booming ad business.

In fact, Amazon can afford, thanks to the faith and generosity of investors, to make no profits at all. No easy task, competing with that.

How Americans Shop Today

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All industries—apparel, grocery, electronics—are affected differently by the move to e-commerce, and consumers are turning to new options, including social marketplaces, disrupting what we typically think of as digital shopping. Here are some insights on major market changes, including the key to Amazon’s dominance, the industries flouting the turn to e-commerce, and a curious preference among millennials, from a recent survey of 1,000 consumers by Signs.com.

6 Companies Reimagining Last-Mile Delivery

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There’s a renewed push in Silicon Valley to tackle last-mile delivery. The use of autonomous vehicles, drones, and artificial intelligence is what more and more vendors are pushing for. Last-mile delivery is the most expensive part of shipping, and increasing fees mean prices are only going higher. The company that can get goods from a transportation hub to the customer’s doorstep in the shortest amount of time will win the retail game, and technology firms are hoping that their innovative solutions will be the answer that retailers are looking for.

Here are six examples of companies that are working to innovate in the last-mile delivery space.

LBMA Vidcast: Zeta Global and PlaceIQ, Amazon’s Delivery Innovation

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: U.S. Army #InOurBoots VR recruiting, Transport for London using WiFi tracking, Havaianas shoppable boardwalk, McDonald’s Sweden’s QR picnic blanket, Zeta Global takes over PlaceIQ’s ad business, Amazon’s employee incentive for creating delivery start-ups.

LBMA Vidcast: Sam’s Club and Instacart Partner on Alcohol Delivery

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Brands form “Voice Coalition”, CherryPicks navigation + translation app, Paytronix + FriendShip loyalty, Signify’s new LiFi, Coca-Cola Italy drives recycling, Sam’s Club + Instacart for alcohol delivery.  Special – new white paper from Digital Element.

What’s a Cloud Kitchen? Amazon’s Next Move to Revolutionize a Major Shopping Sector

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Jeff Bezos likes to say, “Your margin is my opportunity.” Like with Whole Foods and grocery, Amazon moves into new verticals and applies its logistics-first approach to carve out margins, then undercut competitors. It is even getting into shipping, in a move to own its delivery infrastructure.

The next local conquest could be restaurants. For Amazon, it’s not just about serving food, but doing so in a way that aligns with its forte: delivering things to your home. The biggest clues and synergies lie in its established delivery and logistics playbook as well as its recent $575 million investment in Deliveroo.

Enter the cloud kitchen.

food

This Largely Brick-and-Mortar Industry Is Resisting Digital Disruption

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Despite Amazon’s high-profile acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017, grocery is the bastion of brick-and-mortar shopping proving unusually resistant to a takeover by digital channels. At least, that is the vision of consumers, only 15% of whom say they are excited about the technical “revolution” in grocery, according to a new report on the future of retail by Walker Sands.

Outsourced or In-House Delivery? We Did the Math

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Local delivery is rapidly becoming a must-have for all kinds of businesses—people have become accustomed to online ordering and speedy delivery. According to a Go People survey, 65% of retailers will offer same-day delivery by the end of 2019, and according to Technomic, food delivery volume will grow by 12% year-over-year from 2019 to 2023. The question isn’t whether your business should offer delivery, but how.

Word of Mouth Remains Vital for Loyalty in Digital Age

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Pundits have speculated that loyalty is becoming less and less important as mobile and especially voice search drive the consumer toward the most convenient purchasing options. That may be true, but the report indicates loyalty remains a powerful factor, with 53% of consumers saying they are more likely to buy from a retailer they know and trust.

Allset Redefines Its Position in the Mobile Ordering Space

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Standing out in the mobile ordering space isn’t easy. GrubHub, Uber Eats, Door Dash, and dozens of other mobile ordering platforms are competing for business in what’s already become a tight market. So how does an outsider break into the business, and break away from the competition?

For companies like Allset, the answer is to create entirely new services that competitors aren’t offering.

LBMA Vidcast: Pokemon App Driving Traffic to Target, Google Integrates Food Ordering into Maps

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Swatch goes drive-through, iGeolise raises £3.2, Pokemon app driving traffic to Target, Neustar partners with JCDecaux, Google integrates food ordering into maps, MTA accepts Google Pay on subway/bus lines.

LBMA Vidcast: Factual, Walgreens, Burger King

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Factual partners with Airship & Braze, Class action against all 4 U.S. mobile operators, Decathalon opens first U.S. store, Burger King delivers in Mexico City traffic jams, Para’Kito goes AR with Georgia Pacific, Walgreens teams with Narvar.

LBMA Vidcast: Kroger, UberEats, MoviePass

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: MoviePass goes PreShow, Sainsbury test cashierless stores, Let’s Bab for social recommendations, Kroger’s QFC launches DogSpots, UberEats tests food delivery at Toronto Pearson Airport.

LBMA Vidcast: LG Builds Amazon Dash into All Appliances, Tide Launches 24/7 Delivery

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On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: 180byTwo’s eCHO, Outdoorsy the AirBnB for RVs, Outer, Tide launches 24/7 laundry service, LG builds Amazon Dash into all appliances, Baidu builds AI cat shelters. New research from Blis.

7 Delivery Trends You Should Know in 2019

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Greater customer expectations and technological advancements are driving big changes in delivery. What’s more, the delivery experience has emerged as a differentiating factor for customers when choosing one retailer over another. eCommerce retailers that operate solely online and omnichannel retailers that offer a physical and digital presence are both beginning to expand their delivery options to meet customer demand. Here are seven trends that will define retail delivery during 2019.

DoorDash Will Put an End to Old-School Delivery—And Smaller Rivals

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What does the big money for DoorDash mean for the crowded on-demand delivery space? The market is growing as a whole, but there isn’t all that much growth share to go around. DoorDash CEO and founder Tony Xu has said as much.  “If you look at where the U.S. is, there’s two players gaining share. It’s DoorDash and Uber. And DoorDash is growing 65% faster,” Xu said in a conversation with Recode editor-at-large and co-founder Kara Swisher earlier this year.

In Test of On-Demand Economy’s Durability, Postmates Files to Go Public

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There’s nothing more hyperlocal than the on-demand class of startups, which feed off the everyday use cases spurred by a mobile-first world: whipping one’s phone out to order food from a local restaurant (Postmates, GrubHub, DoorDash), hail a ride (Uber and Lyft), or cut out a trip to the grocery store (Instacart, Shipt). Postmates’ founding ingenuity was to apply the convenience of ride-sharing to product delivery. Eight years later, it’s a food-delivery powerhouse, and its value may strike nearly $2 billion.

Kroger CEO Offers Closer Look at Grocery Giant’s Tech Innovation at NRF 2019

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Among Kroger’s latest innovation is a partnership with online grocer Ocado. Kroger is licensing Ocado’s technology—the only grocer in the United States to do so—in order to benefit from its digital-native mastery of automated warehouse operations and on-demand delivery. The company will be expanding its number of warehouses powered by Ocado’s technology in 2019.