Same day delivery? Alas! No more!

E-shopping these days has become a part and parcel of our daily lives. From buying clothes and electronics to buying foods and medicines, you name it and you get it online these days.

With a sudden spur in the buying habits of the online consumers, major e-tailers are leaving no stones unturned to get their customers hooked on to their sites by introducing exciting offers and extensive items onto their list of sellables.

Encashing on this trend, e-commerce websites like Amazon and Flipkart had gone one step ahead and introduced ‘Same-day Guarantee’ delivery service in selected cities in the recent past. The express-delivery service, promising to deliver goods on the same day at an extra cost, was well accepted by the consumers and the formula surely became an instant hit with the shoppers.

However, the hunky-dory scenario created by these online retailers, soon bit the dust with numerous dissatisfied customers and unfulfilled orders. The major reason behind this was lack of a strong supply-chain network. Moreover, same-day delivery costs around four to five times more than normal delivery because goods had to be shipped by air, which is not always feasible. Hence in no time the retailers had to pull back their ‘Same-day Guarantee’ delivery scheme from their websites.

E-tailers off-late have also been cracking the whip on their delivery partners, demanding time-bound and safe dispatch of shipments, as poor logistics capabilities threaten to stall the fast pace of growth witnessed in the sector.
Well with express-delivery service becoming a clear-cut example of easier said than done, I hope the e-tailers this time would come up some other and better formula to lure the e-shoppers to their sites.