E-commerce

When the COVID-19 pandemic first swept across North America and led to emergency shutdowns during the Spring of 2020, the way people acquired food and household necessities was dramatically impacted. As stay-at-home orders minimized personal travel, transit services were reduced and many stores and restaurants either closed or modified their operations. Some of the gaps were able to be filled by online retailers and delivery services. However, access to goods and services varied substantially depending on people’s age, income level, and physical ability. A new multi-university study funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the U.S. DOT- funded university transportation headquartered at Portland State University, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) captured how households responded as local, state, and federal governments imposed and lifted restrictions, brick-and-mortar establishments closed and reopened, and e-commerce and delivery services adjusted to the changing conditions.

Before the pandemic, Urbanism Next developed a framework organizing the disruptions to cities caused by emerging transportation technologies on land use, urban design, building design, transportation, and real estate. COVID-19 has disrupted the trajectory of these emerging technologies and will, in turn, change some our original assumptions. This paper revisits the original Urbanism Next framework, taking into account the cascading impacts of the pandemic. This report is one of two reports completed by Urbanism Next on the impacts of Covid-19.

How is the COVID-19 pandemic changing urban living? In this paper, we explore the landscape of COVID-19 disruptions to date on land use and real estate, urban design, building design, transportation, e-commerce and retail, and goods delivery. We also highlight the longer-term questions and potential ongoing impacts COVID-19 might have on the built environment.

This report details the current state of the North American industrial market in 2020 and its projected growth over the next couple years.

This report merges analyses of distribution models, consumer behavior, data, and insight from trucking industry experts to advise on shifting retail logistics and supply chains. It will provide trucking industry stakeholders with a better understanding of how to adapt to the opportunities and challenges of e-commerce.

The purpose of this study is to go beyond cataloging pilot projects to determine the lessons learned, emerging trends and considerations, and examples of promising practices from pilot projects in the United States and Canada. Researchers assessed 220 pilot projects and 11 case studies. Based on that assessment, they recommend 10 actions for pilot projects generally. The study resulted in 31 lessons learned organized by pilot goals, evaluation, implementation, outcomes, and policy and infrastructure implications.

While consumers have been making more sustainable choices in the physical retail environment, these habits have not translated as well into the digital shopping environment.

Postmates gained approval to begin testing delivery robots in San Francisco.

Across the U.S. growing eCommerce is resulting in increasing deliveries, most of which are inefficient and negatively affect the community. This report is the first in a series that analyzes the opportunities, challenges, and innovations related to eCommerce delivery.

Food delivery service Postmates is building delivery robots to reduce reliance on vehicles. This endeavor faces many of the same challenges as autonomous vehicles, such as safety and public perception.

This article identifies how changing emerging technologies and consumer behavior and priorities will influence retail. These trends include preferences for experiences over things, faster delivery options, and brand identity.

As e-commerce grows, the quantity of packages being delivered to apartment buildings has become overwhelming. Some owners and developers have begun planning for this by increasing the capacity of package rooms and investing in delivery notification services.

Walmart announced free next-day delivery for online orders over $35. The offer will begin in Phoenix and Las Vegas and gradually spread across the rest of the United States.

This article provides a list of retail store closings including department stores, specialty retailers, grocery stores, and food service chains.

Nordstrom plans to open smaller stores in dense urban areas that have no inventory and instead have experiences and services such as a seamstress, a nail salon and a bar.

This article examines how consumer behavior in retail has shifted to a trend of making online purchases and picking them up in stores. It identifies the retailers that have been most successful with this trend and makes investment recommendations.

Target announced that customers can place an online order for delivery if their order is over $35 for a flat delivery fee of $9.99, or for free if they are a member of Shipt.

Although online shopping has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, there has not been enough to make up for the amount of traditional retail jobs lost.

Amazon announced that it will make one-day shipping the standard for all Prime members. This move pressures other retailers like Target and Walmart to keep up with consumers' delivery expectations.

Statistica published a chart ranking the reasons shoppers chose to make purchases online.

Pew Research Center studied the reasons behind why and when Americans choose to shop online vs. in physical stores. Studies conducted by the Center indicated price to be the most important factor in determining whether people chose to shop online or in physical stores. Separately, buying an item for the first time increased the likelihood that a person purchased the item in person rather than online.

Mobile e-commerce is growing and taking over more of overall e-commerce sales. Projections suggest that global growth will continue into 2021.

This website is a resource for consumer habits and economic trends in the restaurant industry in the U.S.

“The growth in e-commerce is driving up demand for smaller industrial spaces nearer to cities so fulfillment firms can quickly get their products to customers, but it remains to be seen if fulfillment centers will start operating in suburban neighborhoods.”

Food delivery has become increasingly popular in China and is generating millions of tons of food packaging waste. Through the use of food delivery apps, ordering food online has become cheap and convenient.

The growth of online shopping has increased packaging waste, especially cardboard boxes from apartment builds and residences as more consumers receive products directly to their homes.

The increasing popularity of online shopping is causing more package deliveries to apartment buildings than the building can handle. New apps, services and building lobby designs are attempting to manage this issue.

Online shopping is making congestion worse by adding endless delivery trucks to cities that are not designed to handle the rising number of daily deliveries.

The growth of e-commerce in the past led to a decrease in brick-and-mortar retail presence, but it appears as if the tides are changing in favor of re-investing in the physical retail market. The line between online and physical commerce is beginning to blur, and companies such as Amazon aim to combine their strategies to expand in both markets.

This website serves as a guide to how e-commerce has affected industrial real estate and building design.

One-day and same-day deliveries are causing companies to need warehouse space closer to the dense urban areas they are serving. However, this land is scarce, expensive and involves a long development process.

Amazon’s shipping network has been increasing rapidly over the past decade which has led to severe working conditions for their thousands of employees around the world, especially during events like “Prime Day.”

With the rise of e-commerce, Americans are demanding more deliveries. However, with declining warehouse availability, congested streets and limited curb access, the U.S.’s infrastructure may not be able to handle the increasing demand.

“Retailers and logistics firms are establishing warehouses closer to large urban centers to keep up with rising consumer demand for faster delivery of products ordered online.”

Logistics development company Prologis has built the first multi-story industrial warehouse in the U.S. just south of Seattle. Other multi-story warehouses have been planned or proposed in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles as growing e-commerce demands faster deliveries.

“Industrial real estate analysts say that in recent years, an increasing number of massive distribution centers have popped up in response to growing e-commerce.”

2019 saw a record number of retail store closings, however the actual retail square footage was not proportionally impacted. This emerging trend is due to smaller tenants opening more stores and retailers shedding space in order to improve sales productivity.

The impacts of e-commerce and changing consumer behaviors have caused brick and mortar retailers to shift their business models and reduce store square footage.

Traditionally massive big box store retailers like Target and Dollar General are opening smaller versions of their stores in urban areas and college campuses to bring in new customers that were previously too far away from their bigger suburban stores.

A smaller, “planning studio” style Ikea store is opening in Manhattan. This downtown NYC version acts solely as a showroom, without the warehouse of build-it-yourself products.

Credit Suisse predicts that as many as 25% of U.S. malls will close by 2022 due to the rise of e-commerce, discount chains, retail bankruptcies and store closings.

The goal of this white paper is to consider the impact of AVs on municipal budgets. AVs create a “potential rat’s nest of a budgeting challenge.” This paper seeks to begin the process of untangling that rat’s nest, and provide the foundation for future phases of the project that will consider potential additional revenue sources to fund the infrastructure changes that may come from the integration of AVs as well as land use planning implications.

The invention of the internet introduced a new typology to the marketplace, the online retailer. Omnichannel retail strategies - where a retailer operates through both physical locations and online sales - have become a necessity in today’s market.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are a near future reality and the implications of AVs on city development and urban form, while potentially widespread and dramatic, are not well understood. This report describes the first order impacts, or the broad ways that the form and function of cities are already being impacted by forces of change including⁠—but not limited to⁠—AVs and related technologies.

Today, warehouses are transforming into massive “mega-distribution centers” located in increasingly suburban areas. However, the rapid delivery expectations of E-commerce will also perpetuate the need for a network of local, smaller-scale supply points.

This report categorizes and summarizes efforts that are already underway in cities across the world to rethink curb management, to outline the key takeaways from the one-day workshop that involved city staff from Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, and to identify major research gaps.

This article examines the increasingly high demand for same-day and two day delivery and what customers are willing to do to get it.

"Thanks to a literature review, interviews of the players of the French CEP sector and urban parcel delivery sector, as well as comparisons with other European countries, this article analyzes the sector's changes, its drivers, and provides an accurate picture, based on examples and figures, of an under-studied sector. The article also highlights some future prospects for the new segment such as the segment's consolidation and the rise of cross-border e-commerce."

The American retail sector is undergoing a long-term structural shift away from small “mom-and-pop” stores and toward national chains. Retail establishments have gotten larger and more concentrated; the mass-market merchandisers of the later twentieth century continued a trend toward consolidation of the retail sector into national chains operating large stores that started before their widespread emergence. In the late twentieth century, Wal-Mart emerged as the world’s most important (and controversial) retailer. The evidence on Wal-Mart’s effects on retail employment suggests either mild positive or mild negative effects, but Wal-Mart’s effect on prices suggests increases in real income.

"This Future of Mobility White Paper is intended to inform and guide policymakers and modelers developing the next iteration of the CTP –CTP 2050 –by presenting updated descriptions and analyses of developments impacting California’s transportation system."

This article explores the rate of retail store closures, its effects on employment, and the role of economy market forces on the changes.

This white paper will discuss the non-technological trends logistics managers much know and then will hone in on the technologies that will impact the logistics in 2018.

A synopsis of how Walmart plans to increase services and capacity in order to continue to compete with Amazon.

This report includes information on the first of many research tasks planned for the partnership between SDOT and the Urban Freight Lab. This is the first assessment in any American city of the privately-owned and operated elements of the Final 50 Feet of goods delivery supply chains. These include private truck freight bays and loading docks, delivery policies and operations within buildings located in Center City.

The news talks about Amazon expand their warehouses (and other facilities) across 382 metropolitan areas in US and how the supply chain may impact local development.

To gain a deeper understanding of retailers’ focus, concerns and investment plans, Zebra conducted a global research study across a wide spectrum of retail segments, including: specialty stores, department stores, apparel merchants, supermarkets, electronics, home improvement and drugstore chains. The results of this study are shared in this 2017 Retail Vision Study.

"This research analyzed the competitiveness of freight tricycles, low- capacity freight delivery vehicles, as compared with diesel vans in urban areas. Freight tricycles, also known as electric-assisted trikes, are low- emission vehicles powered by a combination of human effort and an electric engine. This research developed a cost model that incorporated vehicle ownership and operation models as well as logistics constraints such as time windows, cargo capacity, fuel consumption, and energy use. Unlike previous research efforts, the model was tailored to the unique characteristics of freight tricycles and diesel van deliveries in urban areas. The model was used to analyze the competitiveness of freight tricycles against diesel- powered delivery vans. "

Experts predict Amazon will use the Whole Foods stores, in part, as hubs for grocery pick-up and delivery, helping Amazon resolve the “last mile” dilemma." Overall, it should create opportunity in real estate but take more strategy.

The future of department stores in suburban malls is grim, this article explains the rising trends and what is causing the push.

This article explains to us the reasons Amazon bought Whole Foods - working to create a rather seamless day-to-day operation for its customer base.

This article discuss the changing consumer behaviors and the some e-commerce business' support for retails can help brick-and-mortar retail grow.

The expansion of delivery services is expanding each day with the use of new technology. In this article, we see how a new app can give delivery drivers access to your trunk to leave packages, an option that is created to eliminate the need to leave packages on your doorstep if security concerns you.

Target acquires delivery service Shipt for $550 million, this article explains how its going and how they match up to other delivery options.

In an effort to keep up with competitor Amazon, Walmart partners with delivery company Postmastes to offer same-day grocery delivery to more US households.

This book is about on-demand delivery and its logistic process. It also presents the trend of on-demand services.

This article explores the possible motives for online retailers to open up physical stores.

Retail in the U.S. is going through some hardships. There is too much and the shopping trip is the same each time you go. Millennial's are putting retail into a head spin wanting more, quicker and for better prices with less hassle. For these retailer sot keep up with the wants and needs of it's customer base, they're going to have to make some changes.

It seems that drones are the future of delivery. Now, there's evidence that this outcome could have a positive effect on our energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions.

Deaths and devastating injuries. A litany of labor violations. Drivers forced to urinate in their vans. Here is how Amazon’s gigantic, decentralized, next-day delivery network brought chaos, exploitation, and danger to communities across America.

Bonobos, a popular menswear e-tailer, opened a brick and mortar store on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, but you can't actually leave with anything. This article explains how the store works.

In 2013, eyewear e-commerce pioneer Warby Parker opened its first retail store in SoHo with fairly low expectations. In 2015, that store still occasionally had a line out the door on weekends, and Warby Parker had 12 retail locations across the country, with plans to open seven more before the end of the year. This article explores why the online-native eyewear retailer chose to open so many stores in such a short period of time.

The full story of autonomous vehicles is yet to be written. We created four scenario planning stories that explain how cities could shape the driverless future: tap taxi to tackle isolation, weaving a microtransit mesh, a human touch on robot delivery, reprogramming bus, bikes and barriers.

"In this paper, we present a project in Munich, Germany, where the last mile package delivery is carried out by a CEP company by cargo bikes and eBikes. To this end, two containers and one truck-trailer are placed in the city center which function as depot stations for the parcels to be delivered nearby. We analyze the delivery data, present an optimization scheme for finding suitable container locations, and simulate the routes conducted by cargo bikes for an average day. It can be concluded that the presented approach is a feasible solution for the package delivery in densely populated cities. The vehicle mileage covered by diesel trucks per day is significantly reduced from 180 km to 45 km, approximately."

"CurbFlow is one of a few curb-focused groups that believes it has part of a solution: reorganizing and eventually finding ways to dynamically charge companies for curb space."

The questionable acquisition of Jet.com by Walmart last year has seemed to pay off, this article explains the purchase and their success since.

Amazon agreed to buy the upscale grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.4 billion, in a deal that will instantly transform the company that pioneered online shopping into a merchant with physical outposts in hundreds of neighborhoods across the country.

The presentation includes the macro trend of e-commerce, investment overview, emerging trends in e-commerce, and the future predictive.

Meal-delivery companies are the ultimate symbol of the most powerful force in business today: convenience maximalism. But it comes with ethical, ecological, and economic costs.

Most of today’s retailers and their supply chain advisors understand the shift in retail sales to the online channel but, for many years, the inclusion of gasoline, groceries, and automobile sales in U.S. retail sales numbers masked the true extent of eCommerce penetration. This is a blog summary of a longer report.

Nordstrom has officially opened its first store without inventory, testing a new format for the department store chain called Nordstrom Local.

Trikes can be a major competitor in the CDB delivery market as it can navigate bike lanes and be parked more freely.

"This document is for city administrations, national policy makers, and anyone considering a move to employ cycle logistics. It outlines the major learning points and success factors, and sets out nine recommendations for the most successful implementation. The project demonstrated that e-bikes were popular, efficient, reliable and – above all – saved money compared to the motorized alternative. Most of the participants were so impressed, they are continuing or expanding their use of e-bikes, after the project end-point."

The luxury industry has entered a “new normal,” characterized by lower growth. To succeed in the next decade, brands will need to refocus on their customers to better anticipate and cater to their needs.

A new report confirms what local officials in Oklahoma have been saying for some time: Internet retail sales are eating away at sales tax revenues.

"As e-commerce grows as a percentage of total retail sales, consumers are choosing delivery options with shorter delivery cycles. Not only does this mean that Amazon Prime customers (65 million subscribers in September 2016) can choose Prime Now two-hour deliveries for some high-volume items, it means other retailers are offering same-day deliveries, as are some package delivery companies (United Parcel Service [UPS], Federal Express [FedEx], and United States Postal Service [USPS]) in certain cities. This report reviews how express delivery services now operate, how they are regulated, and how they may affect the state’s transportation system."

There's a good reason Walmart, Kroger, and other supermarket chains are rapidly building out their online grocery options: Amazon.com is running away with the category, and as more grocery shopping moves online, it may develop an impenetrable lead over the competition.

JD.com is an example of what companies may look like in the future of automation. This article talks about how their company, shipping 200,000 orders a day, operates in this new age.

This article lays out the share of the market Amazon versus its competitors hold and the impacts its growth is having.

This article looks at how "retailers are honing their distribution center strategy to meet current e-commerce demands.

The aim of this paper is to make an overview of the business models of the companies developing AVs for Last-Mile Delivery (LMD) of goods and to find out what is the attitudes of the online customers towards using AVs for delivery of their goods.

Nuro, now a part of Waymo, released an autonomous driving grocery delivery service in Scottsdale. The partnership with Fry's grocery charges customers only $6 for delivery and will have two available vehicles on the streets for deliveries.

Food delivery apps are reshaping the restaurant industry—and how we eat—by inspiring digital-only establishments that don’t need a dining room or waiters.

Amazon's physical retail strategy is coming into focus, and just like the company's e-commerce business, it's focused on convenience. Perhaps the best way to make things more convenient for customers is to shorten the time it takes for them to complete a shopping trip.

Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to take space in a first-of-its-kind three-story warehouse, a new type of distribution center that could reduce delivery times in congested cities to hours rather than days. While common in densely-populated Asian and European cities, modern warehouses with multiple floors have been absent until recently in the U.S., where higher land and construction costs deterred developers. But now that more retailers are racing to deliver more same-day packages, developers are starting to build the multistory fulfillment centers needed to speed delivery in congested cities.

In theory, e-commerce can be greener than a bunch of shoppers making personal trips in their own cars: Consolidating products and delivering them on one route to a bunch of homes requires fewer miles on the road. However, that calculus changes significantly if items are coming from further away and have to be sent immediately, which creates fewer opportunities for lumping deliveries together.

The quintessential college experience of getting pizza delivered to your dorm room is about to get a high-tech upgrade. Starship Technologies announced its plan to deploy thousands of its autonomous six-wheeled delivery robots on college campuses around the country over the next two years.

As e-commerce sales march ahead of in-store sales, the major issue discussed at the Retail Industry Leaders Association’s (RILA) Retail Supply Chain Conference: Logistics 2013 was best practices for developing and executing an omni-channel distribution strategy. And real estate—particularly distribution centers (DCs)—is a significant part of the process. This article reviews the main questions asked during the conference.

At 92 million strong, millennials are an economic and demographic powerhouse. They’re also different from every preceding generation since they’ve grown up with personal computers and smartphones. They’re used to a connected world in which information, goods and services are readily available at the click of a button. This millennial mindset is shaping how the tenants of tomorrow are looking for space to live, work and shop and what they expect. In this whitepaper we break down the three most important millennial trends and what they mean for commercial real estate.

The sharing economy and on-demand services are weaving their way into the lives of (some) Americans, raising difficult issues around jobs, regulation and the potential emergence of a new digital divide. This report offers a detailed examination of three different services that exemplify the shared, collaborative and on-demand economy: ride-hailing apps, home-sharing platforms and crowdfunding services.

In an era dominated by ongoing urbanization and rising e-commerce, the efficient delivery of goods within cities becomes a major challenge. As a new element of urban logistics, we discuss the potential of autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (AUGV) regarding the last mile delivery of shipments to customers. We propose an optimization model to minimize the delivery costs of urban shipments using AUGV. Simultaneously, best locations from a set of existing stations are selected for AUGV positioning and optimal route determination. With our developed Location Routing Problem, we provide decision support for parcel service providers, city authorities, and other relevant decision makers. Regarding the Green Information Systems domain, we tackle the lack of solution-oriented research addressing a more sustainable and locally emission free supply of goods within urban areas.