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February 2002
Delivery performance leaves room for improvement
Thirteen per cent of Christmas orders placed online between 26 and 30 November in a trial by consultancy Accenture had still not been delivered by 21 December, the company says. Of the 74 per cent of orders for which an expected delivery date was quoted, 22 per cent were late. And 10 per cent of orders were incomplete or incorrect. On the plus, side 60 per cent of all orders arrived within seven days, 77 per cent within 14 days, and 87 per cent before the Christmas deadline. The Holiday eFulfillment Study Europe was conducted simultaneously in the UK, France, Germany and Spain, and involved purchases from 81 companies in all. The average order value was $31. The results were then correlated with parallel trials in the US. 
It found that retailers were quicker than e-tailers and catalogue companies at delivering the goods (74 per cent within seven elapsed days, compared with 54 and 50 per cent respectively). On average, delivery took 7.5 days, but times ranged from 5.3 elapsed days in the UK to 11.3 days in Germany. Spanish sites were the poorest performers, delivering only 65 per cent of orders in time for Christmas. International orders fared better. Of 24 attempts, 21 were placed successfully, although on average they took 14.2 days to deliver, and their shipping cost was 19 per cent of order value (European average 12 per cent). Comparison with the US study showed that US online shopping sites were more consumer-centric, but had higher fulfilment costs. Average order time was similar to Europe's (7. 2 days), but site reliability was better (only 7 per cent of order attempts failed), and fulfilment accuracy was 95 per cent. On the subject of returns, the study found that 76 per cent of retailers provided return instructions, compared with 68 per cent of e-tailers and 61 per cent of catalogue companies. It says pre-payment of return shipping costs was low; companies were forcing returns shipment costs back to the customer. US companies were generally more helpful about returns, but less inclined to pay for them.
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