The Rise of Same-Day Package Delivery

Amazon Prime Now may be synonymous with same-day package delivery in the eyes of some, but this trademark of modern convenience is available to far more than the one in five American adults who is an Amazon Prime member. Other major retailers, including Google and Wal-Mart, have been in the game since the beginning. Loads of smaller merchants, ranging from grocers to booksellers, are teaming up with delivery professionals to offer same-day delivery options to their customers that order online. Learn more about this trend and what you can do to manage it in your multifamily residential building here.
History of One-Day Delivery
Important financial and legal documents, as well as other local parcels, have long been delivered at the destination on the same day they’ve been dispatched. For decades, restaurants have offered on-time delivery of takeout food almost immediately to patrons and consumers in their area. In the last ten years, online grocers have started to offer same-day delivery service options. But the delivery of food and important documents feels different than the same-day delivery we know, the same-day delivery of the future.
One-Day Delivery Service Today
The origins of same-day delivery as we know it today probably lie in the now defunct Kosmo.com, an online retailer that offered one-hour local delivery service starting in 1998. The company failed in 2001, but certainly inspired the United States Postal Service’s Metro Post. The Metro Post Office service enabled Amazon to offer same-day delivery fulfillment in 15 cities and areas by 2014. By September 2015, Amazon could guarantee one-hour delivery of thousands of goods via Amazon Prime Now. Walmart, using a UPS service, offered same-day delivery starting in 2013.
A Bright Future
Reaching adulthood in the age of the sharing economy and flourishing tech startups, Millennials have grown to expect convenience in just about every facet of their lives. Statistics on one-day delivery show that, while only 13 percent of GenXers and nine percent of Baby Boomers would pay a premium for same-day delivery, fully 56 percent of millennials would. This statistic, coupled with the fact that same-day delivery is still a relatively nascent service, suggests we’ll see considerable growth in the near-immediate delivery of packages in the future. In fact, market research analysts expect same-day delivery companies to be worth nearly one billion dollars by 2019!

Do you cater to millennials? To make your apartment community as attractive as possible to this segment of the population, install a Parcel Pending electronic locker system. Your office staff won’t be bogged down, and your tenants will be able to retrieve packages at their leisure. Everyone wins.