Although the electronic commerce It had been growing at double digits year after year, the pandemic caused by Covid-19, which forced the confinement of the population in their homes and the closure of physical establishments, marked a before and after for e-commerce. On the one hand, those people who had not yet approached electronic commerce or who did not use it on a regular basis, began to do so, becoming new online buyers. On the other hand, given the closure of physical stores, more and new types of products and services began to be acquired through this channel.
At the same time, there was a Increase in companies that boosted the sale of their product or service through the online channel to be able to continue billing without depending on the physical store. These factors led some branches of activity to triple their sales compared to the pre-pandemic situation. A trend that continues today, although without so much impact from the pandemic and with high inflation and the contraction in consumption that this entails globally. In this way, e-commerce not only maintains its growth, but has also accelerated its position on the global market, breaking records in billing, market share, transactions and users. In fact, it is anticipated that the deployment of the internet worldwide and the growth of e-commerce in particular continue to grow and progressively taking a greater role.
However, there are more and more voices pointing out the negative impact of e-commerce on sustainability compared to traditional commerce, since this model has a high impact on consumption habits, on the mobility of cities, on the environment , in addition to the economic and social development of society. In other words, an impact on sustainable development that we must analyze. To find out how ecommerce impacts sustainability, EAE Business School published the study “Sustainability in current e-commerce. The impact of our purchase decision”coordinated by May Lopez, director of development of the platform Empresas por la Movilidad Sostenible and professor of EAE Business Schoolwhich offers very interesting data on this trend that is increasingly present in companies.
The study reveals that 53.7% of online consumers consider that the current e-commerce is not sustainable or doubts that it is. When asking the general public, only one in five respondents consider that the current e-commerce is sustainable, while 79.7% of those surveyed doubt the sustainability of the model. It is also found from the study that 7 out of 10 online shoppers admit to having bought products on impulse, with this impact being greater in the youngest (9 out of 10). In the first quarter of 2021, the date of the surveys, the specialized food trade multiplied its activity by six, just as restaurants tripled their online business volume.
On the other hand, the express shipping (in less than 24 hours) increased by over 10% each year. 15% of online shoppers want to receive their order on the same day and 86% of all deliveries are requested at home. “This means generating costs of up to 3 or 4 times higher than those involved in selling the products in stores. The quick commerce It has a greater environmental impact, due to the increase in the number of journeys with half-load vehicles and requiring more vehicles for delivery, which are generally old and highly polluting”points out the Director of Business Development for Sustainable Mobility.
E-commerce and Black Friday
Marketing campaigns like black fridaywho will be with us in a few weeks, force us to manage, in some cases, increases of 30% to 40% of orders in a short space of time. “A management of temporary production peaks that further increases incidents during the delivery stages, worsening the quality of the service and increasing the inefficiency of the processes. This implies more failed deliveries, more waste, more returns and at the same time more traffic in the cities, with the obvious direct and indirect impact on air quality and traffic accidents”warns Lopez.
The policies that facilitate return processes, in many cases at no additional cost to the customer, are causing the percentage of returns of online purchases to increase year after year, standing at 20%-30% compared to 6% for B2C deliveries, which places Spain in fourth place among the European countries with the most returns. These percentages rise to 50% of purchases, during Black Friday.
Initiatives for a sustainable e-commerce
More than half of those surveyed (55.8%) have penalized unsustainable companies with their purchase decision or are willing to do so. “Movements such as sustainabledeliveries.org recognize that e-commerce is necessary and is here to stay, but we must guarantee that it is sustainable from an economic, environmental and social point of view, prioritizing and recognizing those organizations that are promoting the changes in this regard, they explain. In this sense, three out of four respondents would value a badge that identifies the sustainability of the different online stores.