What's Inside

In our Retail Reimagined series, we offer a thematic outlook to the post-crisis world, identifying and discussing key retail trends that are likely to prevail and exploring how retail may be reimagined in response to shifts in demand and supply.

The coronavirus pandemic resulted in a surge of online shopping amid temporary store closures, prompting brands and retailers to rethink last-mile delivery—with safety and convenience for consumers being top of mind.

In this report, we discuss the ongoing acceleration of improvements in last-mile delivery and fulfillment in retail, as well as our expectations for how advancing technologies will further innovation in this area in the future. We explore the following topics:

• Autonomous delivery robots and drones—with examples from Amazon in China and CVS in the US
• Smart parcel lockers
• Route-optimization software
• Ship-from-store fulfillment and dark stores

We detail examples of innovative approaches to last-mile delivery amid the Covid-19 crisis—such as by JD.com in China—and present the implications of changing last-mile delivery trends for brands, retailers and technology vendors.

Click here to read the previous report in our Retail Reimagined series, which explores the innovative ways in which brands and retailers can create compelling products for consumers.

Click here to read Coresight Research’s ongoing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.