The last mile is more than a cost factor – Fabian Alber wins GS1/EHI award for his Master’s thesis

During the past year the volume of online shopping has soared. With local shops forced to shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we all had to look elsewhere to purchase everything from furniture to fashion. More and more firms offered their products online, accelerating the trend towards e-commerce. This in turn induced a major shift in retail logistics and highlighted the relevance of last-mile delivery.

Against this dynamic backdrop, Fabian Alber investigated how important logistics services are to consumers in his Master’s thesis titled “The Influence of Innovative Last-Mile Logistics Services on Customers’ Online Buying Decisions”. Supervised by Felix Bergmann and Professor Stephan Wagner at the Chair of Logistics Management, Alber evaluated how various aspects of last-mile delivery services influence consumers’ decisions on whether to buy products. Alber notes that these services can easily be overlooked. “I was particularly interested in this topic,” he says, “because many retailers are selling their products online for the first-time due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the related lockdowns. Retailers new to e-commerce are often unaware that logistics services have a major influence on customers’ purchasing decisions.”

The relevance of Alber’s thesis was highlighted on 18 March, when GS1 Germany and the EHI Foundation awarded him the “Wissenschaftspreis”, including 5,000 euros in cash. It was not the only project tackling last-mile logistics services: the start-up “Ducktrain”, which aims to reduce emissions in last-mile deliveries, was shortlisted in a different category.

Alber’s research ultimately produced a tool for online retailers. “Given that so many new retailers enter e-commerce,” he says, “it was very exciting to simulate with which innovative delivery options online retailers can differentiate themselves from the competition”. Through a series of different methods, including a meta-analysis of existing studies, interviews with logistics service providers and online retailers, and a conjoint analysis, Alber discovered that cost, location, and speed of delivery were the decisive factors in consumers’ purchasing decisions. Individual preferences varied, however. These results laid the foundation for a simulated scenario analysis. “We can simulate the delivery portfolio of an online retailer and determine the preferences of consumers, which we quantify in percentages. Online retailers can use the simulation to examine possible changes and innovations in their logistics services, and analyse the impact of these changes on consumers and their business in advance.”

COVID-19 not only impacted the focus of Alber’s thesis, but also how he pursued it. Here Alber looks on the bright side: “I had all my meetings and even my thesis defence on Zoom. Interviewing experts from different parts of the world online, and that being natural for all of them, would probably not have been possible a few years ago. I have to say it was a very enjoyable and interesting experience.”