5 Ways Buying.com’s Micro-Distribution Model is Giving Consumers and Businesses the Last Mile Advantage
Last mile delivery is one of the most expensive and difficult problems plaguing the e-commerce industry, but Buying.com has unlocked the solution. Using decentralized micro-distribution, Buying is making last-mile delivery simple and inexpensive for businesses and consumers.
What is the Last Mile Delivery Problem?
Let’s start by understanding last mile delivery, a term used to describe a product’s journey from a transportation hub or warehouse to its final delivery destination, typically a consumer’s doorstep. While this may seem like the easy part of the process, the problem lies in the high delivery costs involved with this final leg of the trip — especially for small businesses.
Certain big players like Amazon or Costco are able to remedy last mile delivery for customers by giving free delivery away in exchange for a yearly fee, but small sellers don’t have this option. As a result, these smaller players are forced to charge higher shipping fees and potentially lose customers. For this reason, last mile delivery is arguably the biggest and most expensive problem faced by e-commerce. This is where Buying.com and its unique utilization of micro-distribution enters the game.
How Buying.com is Innovating Micro-Distribution
A micro-distribution center, or sometimes termed micro-fulfillment center is a small location that serves e-commerce or local store pickups. This is beneficial in that it allows retailers to leverage already existing stores to increase their online order efficiency and enable quick delivery. Buying.com is innovating these micro-fulfillment centers but putting the power in the hands of ordinary people via a decentralized platform.
With the popular share-economy business model employed by companies like Airbnb and Uber, Buying.com offers two groundbreaking models — turning spare personal spaces into distribution centers, and using everyday vehicles as delivery trucks. Any ordinary person or business that has spare space like personal homes, garages, a business warehouse or stores, can opt to list with Buying.com as a micro-distribution center, and spare vehicles allow you to list your services as a delivery driver. By putting these decentralized centers and vehicles into neighborhoods around the US, Buying.com gives consumers and businesses the last mile advantage in a variety of new ways.
How Decentralized Micro-Distribution Gives Businesses and Consumers the Last Mile Advantage
- Reduced Costs
When you rely on a single or centralized delivery partner, the cost of operations goes up. But with the strategic location of micro-distribution warehouses, you can seriously cut down on transit times and shipping costs thanks to closer proximity to more customers. In turn, Buying.com gives the advantage to businesses and consumers. Yearly fees for “free” delivery are no longer necessary when the system operates at such an inexpensive and granular level.
2. Reach a Wider Customer Base
Much like the benefits you get from reduced shipping costs, having micro-distribution increases your reach to customers spread across a larger area. For example, a customer interested in a pair of shoes is much more likely to order if their purchase will be delivered quickly. If that retailer had service in just one location, shipping might take a few weeks, giving customers a reason to shop elsewhere. The shoe retailer can now advertise online, to a wider base, further away from their shop, expanding their customer reach, and in turn, their sales.
3. Faster local deliveries.
Especially in the age of curbside pickup and same-day delivery, having multiple delivery drivers and local warehouses gives customers access to same day delivery and even increases a customer’s ability to pick up orders themselves if needed. With these options in place, customers can potentially buy and receive items on the same day.
4. Low-Risk Delivery
With micro-distribution centers, there are no entry windows and no need to worry about lousy weather, peak traffic hours, and sudden route disruptions that slow down deliveries. In addition, Buying.com provides a system that uses dynamic delivery route optimization software to calculate and assign the most efficient routes for all deliveries. Data is also crunched in real-time to alert last-mile delivery agents about any upcoming traffic jams or bad weather and send them an alternative route that would be most efficient in the given circumstances.
5. Streamlined Shipping & Delivery Process
If all of that wasn’t enough, Buying.com’s micro-distribution system automates the time-consuming and repetitive tasks involved in the delivery process. Manual methods of tracking such as waybills and handwritten-receipts or notes without barcodes are not only a time suck but they also lead to human error. With Buying.com’s modern last-mile delivery solution, such systems become entirely automated, eliminating verification issues and ensuring accurate and efficient planning — which saves businesses time, resources, and money.
In Conclusion
By innovating the micro-distribution model, Buying.com is solving last-mile delivery and changing the landscape of e-commerce in a variety of ways. This use of decentralization levels the playing field in an industry previously controlled only by a handful of dominant players, giving more time, money and advantages to consumers and businesses everywhere — a powerful step forward in the evolution of e-commerce.
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