News in The Guardian that Royal Mail shares slumped by 8.4% on Wednesday after the newly privatised postal service warned that its profits would be hit by Amazon launching its own delivery service should have been a no-brainer....
Royal Mail said its parcel growth rate would decline from 4%-5% to 1%-2% for at least two years because of Amazon’s decision.
Amazon launched its first same-day delivery service in the UK last month. The new service, called Pass my Parcel, promises to deliver parcels on the same day ordered to hundreds of newsagents across the country.
However, anyone taking a cursory glance at Amazon’s history will realise that Royal Mail, by focusing on the fact that Amazon are simply taking over delivery of their own traffic, are missing the real agenda…
Those with long memories will recall how a series of postal strikes helped the growth of fax-machines... And once the public had become accustomed to the use of alternative written communication, the transition to emails became so inevitable...
Like home-location ‘tie’ of land-line was made redundant by mobile technology, so too the increasing complexity of sending parcels via traditional carriers will become a driver for the growth of a simpler model...
With so much practice, it is surprising that Royal Mail still sees the introduction of Amazon’s own parcel delivery service in terms of the loss of one of its major customers and the 6% hit to Royal Mail’s parcel volume sales.
Anyone who has tried to run the pricing/volume challenge of parcel despatch at the local post office and fared equally badly using alternative providers (see BBC for details of the 16-page Royal Mail guidelines) will realise that the increasing complexity has to present an open goal for Amazon to introduce the parcel-delivery equivalent of 1-click ordering and no-quibble returns when they decide to enter the market for domestic and corporate deliveries…
Apart from making some savings, Amazon have to be taking on their own-delivery to learn the process...
This has to be the ultimate agenda, and NAMs might usefully factor this inevitability of this threat to ALL parcel delivery into their online strategies…
Royal Mail said its parcel growth rate would decline from 4%-5% to 1%-2% for at least two years because of Amazon’s decision.
Amazon launched its first same-day delivery service in the UK last month. The new service, called Pass my Parcel, promises to deliver parcels on the same day ordered to hundreds of newsagents across the country.
However, anyone taking a cursory glance at Amazon’s history will realise that Royal Mail, by focusing on the fact that Amazon are simply taking over delivery of their own traffic, are missing the real agenda…
Those with long memories will recall how a series of postal strikes helped the growth of fax-machines... And once the public had become accustomed to the use of alternative written communication, the transition to emails became so inevitable...
Like home-location ‘tie’ of land-line was made redundant by mobile technology, so too the increasing complexity of sending parcels via traditional carriers will become a driver for the growth of a simpler model...
With so much practice, it is surprising that Royal Mail still sees the introduction of Amazon’s own parcel delivery service in terms of the loss of one of its major customers and the 6% hit to Royal Mail’s parcel volume sales.
Anyone who has tried to run the pricing/volume challenge of parcel despatch at the local post office and fared equally badly using alternative providers (see BBC for details of the 16-page Royal Mail guidelines) will realise that the increasing complexity has to present an open goal for Amazon to introduce the parcel-delivery equivalent of 1-click ordering and no-quibble returns when they decide to enter the market for domestic and corporate deliveries…
Apart from making some savings, Amazon have to be taking on their own-delivery to learn the process...
This has to be the ultimate agenda, and NAMs might usefully factor this inevitability of this threat to ALL parcel delivery into their online strategies…
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