E-COMMERCE DELIVERIES 2.0: TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE E-COMMERCE

Over the last decade e-commerce has reached the age of maturity. However, there are still some growing pains remaining. An important one is the delivery method of parcels, both the strength of e-commerce as the Achilles heel. First of all, the costs of delivery are substantial. If the cargo interest decides to use his right of withdrawal, such costs remain with the webshop. Moreover, parcels get lost or damaged during delivery, while the risk remains with the webshop and the recourse possibilities against the carrier are often very limited. Finally, e-commerce still can't provide the same consumer experience as physical sales, as consumers can't. test. their orders. Even though this is possible at home, the consumer has to pay the costs of reshipment and might see the time investment of reshipment as an obstacle. Webshops meet these concerns by providing for free reshipment, but this further increases the costs. In this paper, two alternatives to deal with these obstacles are introduced. The first one is cooperative e-commerce, whereby different specialized webshops act as mutual delivery points, where parcels of the other webshops can be picked up, tested and left behind in case of a change of preferences. This creates a proximity without having to engage in expensive delivery at home. In the second model this role is performed by individual loyal consumers, who will play a role as ambassadors and accept delivery at home for consumers choosing this delivery point. Albeit such delivery methods seem to be valid complementary alternatives, there are different legal obstacles to such alternative delivery methods. In this paper, after investigating the current obstacles, we investigate the liability impact of both alternatives..