By Tiffany Hsu and Ricardo Lopez
December 26, 2013
The crush of last-minute online shopping that stymied Christmas deliveries for thousands of people served as a harsh lesson to retailers and shippers: The ever-exploding number of Internet orders is making on-time distribution more difficult.
Though cybershopping still is a small part of overall retail sales, companies eager to lure customers to the new frontier are adding to the pressure by touting same-day delivery options in many areas.
But the difficulties that FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. faced in distributing packages promised by Christmas Eve suggest that retailers and shippers need to work out kinks in the process before delving more deeply into the digital realm.
On Sunday, Booz & Co. Chief Retail Strategist Thom Blischok ordered china for his wife on EBay Inc.’s website, expecting the U.S. Postal Service to deliver it Tuesday afternoon. It didn’t arrive until Thursday, so Blischok made do over the holiday with a gift of a photo of the item.
The delay, he said, is a sign of suddenly overwhelming Internet shopper traffic.
“The online environment this year was absolutely phenomenal,” he said. “It caught fire, more than anyone could have ever predicted.”
E-commerce retailers have had a banner year, with online sales rising more than 16% year over year on Christmas Day alone, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark.
Amazon.com Inc. said it had its best holiday ever, with 36.8 million items ordered worldwide on Cyber Monday, the equivalent of 426 items a second. The company also said that more than 1 million people became members of its Prime service in the third week of December — a new high for any week.
Customers have been increasingly drawn to the convenience of online shopping, especially as reports of Christmas Eve fights at crowded malls dotted social media sites.