Initial Situation
- One of the core customer segments of an automotive OEM selling LCVs are Courier-Express-Parcel (CEP) providers (e.g.: DHL, UPS, Hermes)
- In the phase of planning the customer segment targets for the upcoming years, serving as a basis of product development and sales, they came across a hypothesis needed to be investigated and proven
- The client wanted to find out, whether in mid-term online sellers globally are going to build up an own fleet for last-mile delivery (as per Amazon model) or keep on partnering with CEP service providers
Project Objectives
- Within the two focus segments of eCommerce and eRetail, the objective was to analyse their status-quo and future relation to last-mile delivery
- Hypothesis about a change in last-mile delivery model and LCV ownership to be evaluated, besides focusing on future delivery vehicles
- Further focus on current last-mile delivery and relationship to CEP providers to identify pain points and needs related to LCV usership
- Key findings to serve as a basis for decision making on top management level reg. the company’s future customer segment focus
challenges we faced
- Project done in the busiest online sales season of the year: around Christmas
- Expert identification and relevance, given the bi-dimensional experience/ expertise required (online sales & last-mile delivery)
- Asian regional challenges given very different culture, networks and online presence
Seller type and regions
Project was segmented by online seller type (eCommerce/ eRetail) and regions (Europe, North America, Asia) to derive differences and similarities
Short-list creation
First, 165 relevant companies have been identified using secondary research serving as a starting point for narrowing down to a short-list of ca. 100 companies globally
Analysis & ranking of shortlisted companies
Shortlisted companies have been analyzed from six different perspectives incl. in total over 60 aspects (e.g.: delivery speed, drop-off points, partners, strategy)
A scoring model fed by these aspects concluded the top 10 companies per region
Additionally discussions with shortlisted companies and CEP/ associations have been conducted
Key findings
Over 60 one-hour phone discussions resulted in 60 company profile and 120 interview slides – key findings presented on 15 top management slides