The bar just got a bit higher

At first sight, it’s a statement of the obvious: consumers want to know when their online purchase will arrive.

But the new survey by YouGov for Infor goes further than that to demonstrate the fact that consumers are demanding higher supply chain performance across a broad array of product categories.

And the penalty for failure is that consumers will switch brands if supply chain performance doesn’t keep pace with their ever-increasing expectations.

The survey of 5,000 consumers in the UK, France, Germany and the United States found that 78 per cent identified Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) and real-time location information as being most important to know, when waiting for a purchase to be delivered at home or to a pickup location.

It also found that consumers are more likely to switch brands related to their day-to-day needs, including groceries, household products, fashion/footwear, and health & beauty.

However, even in product categories such as high-tech, furniture and automotive, consumers indicated that they would switch brands if supply chain performance faltered.

And consumers are demanding a higher supply chain performance across a broader range of categories than in 2016 when YouGov carries out a similar survey for Infor.

On one level, retailers and their supply chain partners can take some comfort from the fact that these results reflect the fact that the quality of the delivery services has been rising.

But there is no getting away from the fact that the bar just got a bit higher.