UK Letter Mail Demand: A Content Based Time Series Analysis Using Overlapping Market Survey Statistical Techniques

Competition has become increasingly important in the postal sector for some time in the form of alternative entrants providing mail delivery. However, the competition from ICT in the form of email and instant messaging, the Internet, Facebook and other forms of social networking and portable wireless devices such as the iPad and Kindle may be even more significant. Mail volumes are falling and the economies of scale that have made possible daily deliveries to every address are being eroded. This book assesses volume these declines resulting from this so-called ‘eSubstituion’ and looks at the ways the postal sector can adapt to the rapid changes resulting from ICT. The impact of electronic invoicing on transactions mail, and the impact on bulk mail of electronic forms of advertising are examined. Strategies, including pricing and access policies, are discussed in the context of the increasing impact of ICT. A rethinking of the role of mail in an electronic age is taking place and this book provides the cutting-edge of this rethinking and the attempts of POs to reinvent themselves while continuing to meet the public’s expectation of continuing ubiquitous daily deliveries of traditional mail products

Analysis of the Effect of Management Quality Variables in Delivery Cost Functions

Letter volumes in countries with advanced broadband networks have been in decline since the early to mid-2000s while, more recently, parcel volumes have started to grow quite rapidly. The main drivers of these trends, namely the substitution of physical letters with electronic modes of communication and increasing levels of on-line shopping, are expected to continue for some time. This raises two important challenges for postal universal service providers (USPs). The first is to manage operational changes to meet the evolving needs of consumers, such as changes in the quantity, shape, size and weight of mail sent and received. Second, USPs need to reduce costs and increase efficiency as quickly as is practically possible in order to help slow the decline in letters and to compete more effectively with other parcel providers