An exploration on e-retailers’ home delivery – strategic elements and their prioritisation

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a research exploring the important strategic elements and their prioritisation for e-retailers’ home delivery logistics process efficacy improvement.

Design/methodology/approach

The research was completed through focus group, survey and importance-performance analysis.

Findings

The research identified, confirmed and prioritised a set of explicitly important strategic elements currently deemed important by e-retailers for ensuring the efficacy of their home delivery logistics process in Chinese marketplace, and also referential to the other similar emerging marketplaces.

Research limitations/implications

The research contributes positively to the enrichment of the theoretical knowledge pool of e-retailers’ logistics performance improvement.

Practical implications

The research findings guide/inform the strategy development and implementation for e-retailers entering and/or operating in Chinese marketplace. And the findings can also be referential to the e-retail strategy development for entering and operating in other emerging markets similar to China’s. This point is particularly meaningful for those e-retailers that want to expand the outreaching and increase the popularity of their businesses in the global marketplace.

Originality/value

Corresponding to the much needed further research on e-retailing home delivery performance improvement, the research provides findings that add substantial new insights into the field, with a particular focus on China, as one of the emerging developing marketplaces.

Citation

Wang, C., Mao, Z., O'Kane, J. and Wang, J. (2016), "An exploration on e-retailers’ home delivery – strategic elements and their prioritisation", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 614-633. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-04-2015-0048