What is the digital marketplace going to look like in five, ten, or even fifty years? How will consumers purchase the products that they want, and how will order fulfillment take new forms? These are the questions that everyone is waiting to see in the world of e-commerce. Businesses are aiming to prepare for the new demands of their customers, while the market looks for increased availability of products and efficient delivery. These changes will cover a wide range of trends, but let’s take a look at three keys to the future of order fulfillment.
MORE THAN MONEY
The future of shipment receiving is going to be about more than just price for consumers. As sellers all vie to offer the best deals on products and the most efficient delivery timeframes, customers will naturally make decisions based on other variables. It is possible we will reach a point of diminishing returns at which it may not matter so much that one product is slightly cheaper or can be delivered more quickly. After reaching a baseline of affordability and ease of fulfillment, consumers may be more likely to focus on customer service, quality of products available, recommended suggestions, and overall user experience. The future will be about more than money, even as so many businesses battle to offer goods at the best prices.
AUTOMATED DELIVERY
No one knows exactly how far away the age of delivery by robotic drone or self-driving truck is, but everyone sees it coming in some form or another. Pilot programs of self-driving transports and beta testing of drone delivery are still in the early stages, with large technology companies working out early kinks and assessing feasibility. In ten years, we may not see helicopter drones dropping off packages of food to apartment windows, but automation is certainly here to stay. Perhaps self-driving cars will do the majority of highway driving, offloading their cargo to shared-service warehouses for distribution by different subcontractors. Drone delivery may only prove cost effective for certain types of products like medicine, or drones may be used to assess other order fulfillment information in the field or to grab returned orders. The specifics are all still up in the air, but order fulfillment in ten years time is likely to have more automated machines in the loop.
LOCATION FLEXIBILITY
In the present, we tend to think about order fulfillment as a point delivery to an address. This is changing with the rise of in-store pickup options and other types of location flexibility, and we expect to see that trend continue. In a few years time customers are likely to expect that orders can be easily routed to their home, or their vacation destination, or to a friend’s house, or to any of the travel points in between.
E-commerce merchants are now working on intuitive solutions to these desires for location flexibility. In ten years time, order fulfillment will be much more well integrated into geographic information system mapping, due to both customer expectations and room for improved efficiency for distributors.
