How Dare You Replace My Deliveryman?! Acceptance of Last-Mile Transportation Innovations – A Qualitative Perspective

Abstract

E-commerce continues to grow at double-digit rates. While many e-tailers are presumably delighted with their prospering businesses, this growth also poses challenges. Logistics networks are reaching their capacity limits, which is why firms are looking for new solutions that enable fast, reliable, and cost-efficient delivery. Of special interest is the particularly costly last-mile. Against this background, this paper qualitatively examines which factors influence the acceptance of three last-mile transportation mode innovations, namely, (1) drones, (2) robots, and (3) crowd delivery. To this end, 29 interviews were conducted with e-commerce customers to gain insights into how they view such concepts. Logistics service providers and e-tailers can use the findings to increase acceptance of such solutions by means of targeted communication. The results also form the basis for further research, as they can be used to operationalize the theory of planned behavior (TPB) constructs of “attitude”, “subjective norms”, and “perceived behavioral control”.