You would be quite happy to allow someone else to open the boot of your car and drop off your groceries while you are absent. You would trust random strangers to deliver your new shoes on their way past your home. You would gladly accept a prescription-drug order from an unidentified flying object hovering outside your door. All to avoid going the extra mile to pick up cheap goods ordered online in person.
But all these options cost money – which lazy and impatient internet consumers are reluctant to pay. Fevered excitement about automated aerial couriers, initially stoked by Amazon , will die down when it becomes clear that drones are unworkable in all but the remotest areas or most specialised circumstances. Deliveries will concentrate instead on offices, where many people still spend most of the day. That will raise the question of whether the customer, the post room, the retailer or the delivery company should bear the cost of covering the “last mile” for internet shoppers.
Retail supply chains used to be so much simpler. Goods delivered to a hub would be distributed in large, cost-effective consignments to a finite number of shops. But while ecommerce has made “going shopping” easier for customers, it has also underlined the fact that the shortest step in the journey – the one we all used to make, before we slumped back on to the sofa with our iPads – is the hardest to replace.
