Who is interested in a crowdsourced last mile? A segmentation of attitudinal profiles

Online and omnichannel retail developments placed logistics at the front-end of consumers’ purchase journeys. Particularly the last mile of the supply chain increasingly affects consumer satisfaction, while its financial and environmental impact is critical. “Crowd logistics” is introduced as a promising solution. As consumers are increasingly driving innovation and initiatives in the last mile, it is important to know their preferences and perceptions. Our objective is to identify which type of consumer is interested in a crowdsourced last mile and which particular crowd logistics services are considered interesting. To this end, we set up a survey among a sample of one-thousand consumers that represent the Belgian population. The survey is analysed using descriptive statistics and two-step cluster analysis. Analysis shows that consumers support neighbour relays and delivery by retailers’ employees, but general interest is low. A cluster analysis identifies four attitudinal profiles. One segment, labelled the “trailblazers”, are most likely to adopt crowdsourced last mile services: they strongly prefer delivery at home and rely on their community of neighbours when a delivery fails. They are more interested in last mile innovations and sustainability enhancements. The research contributes by taking a consumer perspective on the last mile and by including three types of services and four types of crowd. Three recommendations for retailers are formulated, to focus on a crowdsourcing solution that combines collection and delivery among their employees’ local network, to target consumers that fit the identified profile and to accentuate crowd logistics’ quality of enhancing information transparency.