A Strategic Model to Improve the Last Mile Delivery Performance in E-commerce Parcel Delivery.

Last mile logistics is the most time consuming and expensive stage of the delivery process. Facing the competitiveness of E-commerce with the rapidly fluctuating consumer demand is one of the biggest challenges faced by most of the companies. Further, Last mile delivery performance became the most crucial factor of the relationship between E-commerce retailer and end customer, as it can either establish or break the bond, which directly affects on the reordering decision of the customer. At present, customers have plenty of online buying options to switch up. Therefore, retailers exert pressure on Last mile service providers to optimize their performance. The challenge lies in the reaction of last mile services providers when meeting the requirements of increased parcel demand. Thus, maintaining cost efficiency and high quality of the service are essential for Last mile services providers to succeed in online business. Unfortunately, most of the Last mile strategies fail because of not conducting proper studies on the expectations of key parties; retailers, last mile service providers and customers. This scrutiny focuses on eliminating the inefficiencies in Last mile delivery by identifying the factors that should be considered when implementing a Last mile strategy by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of current practices through qualitative and quantitative analysis, using key parties engaged in last mile delivery in Sri Lanka. Thematic analysis and regression analysis are used as the main methodologies to identify the relationships within the variables. The strategic model presented by the current scrutiny as the final output can be used by the Last mile logistics service providers when implementing their Last mile strategies to meet retailer and customer expectations in a cost effective manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]