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Research Outline

Prepared for Rob B. | Delivered January 8, 2021

Order Tracking

Goals

  • To provide information on the number of people who think they have had a least 1 order in the last year that they lost track of nd may have never received without knowing
  • % of customers who think they have lost merchandise
  • Estimated value in US Dollars of lost merchandise

Early Findings

Volume
  • A report by Statista found 87 billion packages were shipped worldwide in 2018. Pitney Bowes, the source for this information, and creators of the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index, confirmed that the number of parcels shipped in the U.S. were 13 billion, and in 2019 this rose to 14.7 billion 
  • In 2019, Spiegel Online published some key findings from a McKinsey report showing on B2C ecommerce trends. This found that for non business customers, the average American received 21 packages a year
  • A 2015 article by Practical Ecommerce found that in the US, the average order value for a typical online retailer was approximately $78
Missing Parcels
  •  Business Insider reported in 2019 that nationwide, more than 1.7 million packages go missing every day in the U.S. and this contributes to a total $25 million in lost revenue
  •  Clutch Logistics data from 2019 found 51% of online shoppers did not receive a package they ordered in the past 6 months, with two-thirds of those claiming it was lost in transit, and a third suggesting it was stolen after delivery
  • Some interesting insight from C + R Research concluded that 83% of package theft victims reported the missing item straight away to the seller, while 13% reported the incident immediately to the police
Tracking
  • American logistics company produced a fact sheet in 2012 which suggested the average order was tracked 2.42 times (One might imagine that with improved internet access and mobile communications over the past decade, the true figure may have increased since then)
  •  Proship in Solutions reported in 2017 that 97% of customers expect to be able to track and monitor their orders through every step of the process
Conclusion
  • There is a lack of conclusive available survey or customer satisfaction data on whether customers believe they may have lost track of purchases. However from available shipping industry data, we can make inferences about the scale of the issue
  • With ~ 1.7 million parcels going missing every day in the US in 2019, this implies there are somewhere in the region of ~ 620 million missing parcels that year
  • Further to this, 14.7 billion parcels were shipped in the US, it follows that ~ 4% of these parcels go missing
  • Taking an average value of $78 per parcel, an estimated value for the total cost of all missing parcels in 2019 would be around ~ $48 billion
  • The average customer receives 21 parcels a year, 4% of these would mean that each customer loses approximately ~ 0.9 parcels per year
  • We have seen that very high numbers of customers track their parcels. 97% believe the ability to track is essential and the average parcel is tracked almost 2.5 times
  • This leaves a very small number, 3%, under 10m people based on the population of America. Given that these people only lose ~ 0.9 parcels per year, these would leave a relatively small number of missing parcels, valued at around ~ $695 million, of which the number forgotten about would be even smaller