|
|
|
E-commerce, E-Logistics and the Environment
BackgroundThere has been a phenomenal growth in online shopping over the last decade.
-
£22.9 billion spent online in the UK in first half of 2009 (IMRG)
-
69% of shoppers now shop from home
-
11m Britons shop from home at least twice a week (Shopzilla.co.uk)
- 820 million parcels delivered in 2008 (IMRG)
There has been a major impact on the physical movement of products at different geographical scales:
-
reshaping global supply chains;
-
restructuring national distribution systems;
-
and locally, creating new patterns of home delivery.
Objectives
Analysis of Business-to-Consumer E-commerce (B2C)
- Review previous research and data sources on the environmental effects of retail distribution
-
Develop a methodology for comparing the environmental impact of online, conventional and hybrid distribution channels.
-
Collection and analysis of operational and environmental impact of online retailing.
-
Comparison of the environmental effects of online, conventional and hybrid retail channels
-
Assessment of the opportunities for reducing externalities in online retailing / home delivery
Framework and research design: online distribution channels
Online distribution channels differ from conventional retail channels in their supply chains, and in the nature and scale of their environmental impacts.
Distribution stages (Figure 1) for online versus conventional retailing from the point of divergence (e.g. for books from the wholesaler).
Figure 1: Conventional Channel and Online Distribution Channel
It has been argued, for example, that purchasing a product online and having it delivered to the home will produce less CO2 than shopping for that product in the traditional way.
The general public also perceive that shopping online is more environmentally-friendly (Figure 2).
This module sheds new light on the effects of e-commerce on the environment by comparing carbon emissions for products in the two retail channels.
The work examines the implications of extending the investigation to include not only all transport-related emissions, but emissions linked with activities within associated buildings.
The start-point for the analysis is further-up the supply chain, at the point of distribution divergence for the two retail channels.
Figure 2: Points of Distribution Divergence
updated 11 Nov 2009
|