Service Requirement For Terminal Delivery: An Empirical Study From The Perspective Of Online Shoppers

Purpose Terminal delivery made great influences on customer's overall logistics experience in ecommerce situations, while researches for this delivery process lagged far behind in recently years. This work was dedicated to establish a measurement model of terminal delivery in express industry, it contributed to reveal the connotation of the last mile problem and to find out customer's primary requirements in a theoretical views. In addition to that the research would also provide some management implications to related firms as well as government departments.Design/methodology/approach: Mixed approaches were adopted to achieve the above objective. Firstly the paper carried out systematic literature reviews and several potential dimensions were defined in qualitative analysis, subsequently an empirical study was implemented which included both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. This quantitative analysis was aimed at verifying theoretical measurement dimensions and even refining their items.Findings: Four service requirement dimensions including service attitude, service reliability, service standardization and service flexibility were proposed in this work with totally 18 measurement items. The empirical result was significantly different from traditional models of logistics service quality which usually put emphases on the whole transport. Additionally the research indicated that online shoppers were more concerned about service process than its result, so process regulation should be strengthened to enhance customer's satisfaction.Originality/value: The research was conducted from the perspective of online shoppers instead of service provider, meanwhile the proposed measurement model focused on terminal delivery rather than overall distribution process, the management implications were useful for related companies or industry administrative department to improve delivery guidance.