A report released by the renowned economist and trade expert, Dr. Rebecca Harding, and sponsored by Amazon Freight, investigated the pressures that supply chain decision-makers are facing, and helped to uncover the impact of freight on the global e-commerce space.
Within the survey, freight decision-makers across all spans of business sizes agreed that sustainability in logistics is a top concern that will significantly affect their organisations over the coming years. 99% of survey respondents confirmed that they are already bringing in sustainability measures—with all respondents looking at the potential of solutions like advanced freight lane matching, which uses data and technology to generate optimal matches of backhaul movements. This can support both cost-effectiveness and sustainability initiatives.
Key obstacles for shippers
The modern world of e-commerce depends on supply chain efficiency. Customer demand for swift and convenient experience continues to rise, making on-time deliveries a significant priority for online retailers. At the same time, demand grows further for increased sustainability in freight.
With global logistics facing a series of challenges in recent times, from driver shortages to geopolitical disruptions—creating cross-border friction and pushing up costs—it is becoming increasingly difficult for smaller, enterprise shippers to keep up with global demands while they also work to ensure sustainable logistics.
Looking closely at the statistics found within this survey, e-commerce activity tends to be dominated by larger businesses who can afford to invest more in their digital shop window. Customer experience is a huge differentiator for these enterprise businesses, who are competing in various oversaturated markets due to online shopping. To stand out from the competition, these businesses know they have to make the shipping processes seamless—which takes efficient fulfillment and operations at each stage.
When discussing their primary challenges in 2023, enterprise shippers reported an average budget cut of €1 million. Additionally, 39% of enterprise shippers said they were likely to be impacted by rising costs. Of these shippers, 42% of them stated that the main impact was lower sales.
Half (50%) of all businesses reported lower customer satisfaction rates due to freight challenges. This further reflects the core concerns for e-commerce customer experience and retention. Crucially, for e-commerce shippers selling goods internationally, 38% reported difficulties with their cross-border movements.
Boosting resilience through optimised investments
But enterprise businesses have been hard at work finding solutions to reduce costs and enhance efficiency to help them manage these challenges. Dr. Rebecca Harding’s survey revealed 40% of these respondents chose to invest in tracking and delivery and inbound freight co-ordination. Overall, over a third (36%) of survey respondents in varying business sizes and locales said they were able to push their sales as a result of the difficulties in freight logistics.
For e-commerce, strategies like distributing inventory across multiple warehouses can cut costs by automatically preparing and dispatching orders from conveniently placed distribution centres, straight to the customer. This can be instrumental for improving their customers’ experiences and satisfaction. However, between 2023 and 2024, 56% of freight decision makers reduced their spending on advanced warehouse management systems (46% for the total sample).
The future of freight: sustainability, cost, and innovation
All businesses that were surveyed agreed that they were confident in the ability of tech innovations to assist them to overcome the challenges that they were facing in the freight industry, especially as they look ahead at the impact of climate change on their logistics operations.
Respondents highlighted freight software management as a key priority for supporting growth, efficiency, and sustainability in logistics. This especially has a significant impact for e-commerce vendors who are seeking to drive efficiency across their logistics for superb customer service.
Smart tracking via mobile was also emphasised for its ability to improve shipment visibility. 34% of enterprise shippers said this was their priority. By leveraging these tools, E-commerce businesses can make deliveries more transparent and build customer satisfaction through managed expectations.
Amazon Freight is at the forefront of innovating freight technology for more efficient and sustainable logistics, including real-time shipment tracking, intermodal solutions, and transparent pricing using lane-match analysis for full-truckload (FTL) and less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments. Amazon Freight is one of the biggest palletised FTL carriers shipping goods into Amazon fulfillment centres across the UK and Germany. All of this is boosted by its large partner network in Europe, and the innovations that will continue to shape the future of freight.
Read the report in full to get the whole story, or click here to watch the conversation that took place between Dr. Rebecca Harding and Chris Roe, the managing director at Amazon Freight.
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