The potential acquisition of Home Retail Group (HRG) by Sainsbury’s is a story that is so full of twists and turns it could make a soap opera scriptwriter jealous. Once upon a time Sainsbury’s owned Homebase and Tesco was the main retail partner of Green Shield Stamps, the forerunner to (more…)
This time last year, we looked at the issue of returns in relation to the competing pressures of maintaining customer relationships and protecting margins. Here in early January 2016, as this year’s returns peak is in full swing, it seemed like as good a time as any to look back and reflect (more…)
On Monday of this week Sweden and Denmark reintroduced border controls, adding their names to the list of European countries now restricting free movement in the wake of the refugee crisis facing the continent. First Sweden introduced border checks with Denmark, that prompted Denmark to announce spot checks along its (more…)
We updated this story to include a brief Q&A with Matthew Robertson, commercial director of NetDespatch. Royal Mail has announced that it has acquired NetDespatch, the parcel data and labelling platform for postal and parcel carriers. NetDespatch was founded by CEO Becky Clark in 1999. It works with a wide list of ecommerce (more…)
Women’s fashion retailer, Hobbs, is offering free next-day delivery to Doddle stores as one of its newest shipping options, until 23 December. The promotion follows the retailer partnering with Doddle, which will offer next-day services for £3.95 (free for purchases over £150) and free returns. Hobbs, which is in the (more…)
Delivery convenience matters most to shoppers aged between 18 and 34, according to research from eBay Enterprise and Imperial College Business School. The study found that 65% of UK shoppers in that age bracket are more likely to buy from an online retailer that offered convenient delivery over one that (more…)
Ecommerce and delivery companies will make up one third of business making up the new Tech City UK Future Fifty intake, making ecommerce the dominant trend in the programme. The Future Fifty programme showcases and supports 50 of the UK’s leading growth-stage digital companies, and the new intake have been (more…)
Joining Birmingham, London, and Newcastle, Amazon shoppers in and around Manchester are now able to get one-hour delivery via the online retail giant’s Prime Now service. Orders placed as late as 9:45pm on Christmas Eve are eligible for Prime Now delivery, although in some postcode areas it operates as a (more…)
A study by JDA and PwC finds that only a small percentage of retailers and brands are able to fulfil their omnichannel sales profitably… Retailers and consumer goods manufacturers are spending an enormous amount of money, energy and time to improve their omnichannel sales capabilities. While this may not be (more…)
Yodel has exorcised the ghosts of last year’s cyber week peak, the company has said, by delivering a record-breaking number of parcels between 26 November and 2 December, the cyber week period. The overall volume of parcels into the Yodel network during cyber week 2015 was 5,098,559, an increase of just 1% on the 5,048,305 (more…)
With shoppers saying that returning products bought online is difficult, inconvenient and too complicated should retailers be doing more to ease the consumer pain points, make the processes more efficient and drive up customer loyalty? Emma Herrod investigates. Not only do customers want retailers to offer free returns on goods (more…)
A single dot on a graph is just that – a dot. Two dots make a line. Three … well, now you can see a pattern emerging. And although one swallow does not make a spring, as the saying goes, I’m going to stick my neck out – again – (more…)
Asda, owned by that colossus of the retail scene, Walmart, is held to be responsible by many for the introduction of Black Friday to the UK market. Whether that is strictly true may be a point of contention, but it was certainly one of those leading the charge. There is, (more…)
Last week, Asda announced it was getting into the parcels game with the launch of ToYou, an end-to-end fulfilment service that will see Asda vehicles collecting orders from retailers and 3PLs across the country. As reported in eDelivery’s sister title, InternetRetailing, Asda “is enabling third-party retailers to offer their customers the (more…)
The next two months will be a testing time for everyone in the multichannel retail world, none more so than the delivery companies, who are at the sharp-end of service provision. This time last year you would have been hard-pressed to find someone who was seriously predicting the imminent demise (more…)
Researching the next IRUK Top500 report has revealed significant enhancements in logistics practices over the past year. Martin Shaw, InternetRetailing’s Senior Researcher, shares some of the findings. In the course of re-making our index it has become increasingly clear that what qualifies a retailer as a top performer can change (more…)
Despite predictions of £1bn worth of sales being made this coming Black Friday – which is now precisely four weeks away – research from IMRG and eDigitalResearch has found UK shoppers evenly split as to whether or not they are actually looking forward to the event. According to the survey of 2,030 (more…)
Although he’s not in a position to give us his opinion on how to run a successful ecommerce business, few people were more practiced in the art of expansion than Napoleon Bonaparte. The Little Corporal came a cropper 200 years ago, finally succumbing at the battle of Waterloo in June (more…)
UK retailers can look forward to a second spike in online shopping this Christmas, according to a study from eBay Enterprise. Analysing data from last year, and projecting it on to what might happen in just a few weeks’ time, eBay Enterprise has concluded that while Black Friday and Cyber Monday (more…)
Last week saw the introduction of the Consumer Rights Act on 1 October, which has a number of implications that impact particularly on the e-commerce logistics business. Perhaps the most obvious is its potential to put more pressure on returns networks. eDelivery spoke to one of the Acts authors, Jo (more…)