Utility and Weight Importance of Product Delivery Attributes in a Collection and Delivery Point Dominated Marketplace

Abstract: When purchasing a product from an e-commerce retailer, consumers often gets to choose among different delivery options, consisting of multiple attributes that are evaluated to choose the most preferred one. Information integration theory (IIT) was used as the model to know how consumers integrate and evaluate a multi-attribute problem such as last mile delivery choice. The aim of this research paper was to find which attributes that had the highest impact on delivery option choice in a marketplace were collection and delivery points (CDPs) dominated the delivery method. This was done by calculating the importance weights of different attributes through consumers’ part-worth utility for different attribute levels. Based on a conjoint analysis survey study based on responses from 90 individuals, delivery cost was found to be the most important attribute for consumer choice, with delivery method and delivery lead time having lower similar importance ratings. Consumers found much more part-worth utility in a CDP offering where the pick-up location could be chosen rather than getting their product to a default CDP. This research paper gives academia a framework and method combination to solve future multi-attribute problems and help e-commerce retailers in a CDP dominant marketplace to know what attributes to focus on when implementing delivery options in the future.