Meeting the Demand for Speed and Security

By Dan Spitale. VP, UPS Capital & Delivery Solutions

In 2025, eCommerce has fully transitioned from convenience to expectation, reshaping industries and consumer behavior. Marketplaces and mega-merchants like Amazon have set the pace, and retailers, merchants, and smaller eCommerce platforms are under pressure to meet the ever-increasing consumer demands.

This pressure is now being felt across all sectors. While new opportunities are immense, the challenges are equally significant—when protecting perishable goods, offering personalized delivery windows, or orchestrating orders to balance speed, safety, and cost-efficiency. Addressing these challenges is not optional. It's essential for staying competitive.

For over half a decade, demand for expedited delivery options has skyrocketed. Next-day shipping is now 58% more popular, and same-day delivery has grown by over 160% in recent years. What was once a luxury has become the standard, with consumers expecting two-day shipping for everything from health and wellness products to electronics and apparel.

Consumers feel more urgency when it comes to delivery in these product categories. That's not to say more customized or flexible delivery for other product types is needed; rather, merchants will need to adopt more intelligent solutions that can orchestrate delivery speed and features at the product or SKU level.

As shipping timelines are tightened overall, the risk of lost, stolen, or damaged packages also increases. Nearly a third of merchants have reported a rise in claims due to shipping mishaps, and 74% of merchants say delivery problems have a notable impact on their ability to retain customers.

While retailers face the brunt of the "Amazon Effect," other industries, such as healthcare and food and beverage, will face challenges particular to those sectors when trying to meet the table stakes of delivery customization.

Last year, perishables were ranked third among consumers' delivery worries. Spoilage for grocery, healthcare, and other DTC shipments can lead to significant losses for merchants and irrevocable damage to customer experience and satisfaction.

Merchants have been using technology like temperature-controlled packaging, real-time shipment monitoring, and predictive analysis to address these issues. By better managing sensitive shipments with increased visibility, corrective action (or preventative action) can be taken to ensure a successful damage-free delivery before spoilage occurs—and should the worst happen, proper coverage can mitigate risk.

This proactive approach some merchants have been taking is where eCommerce is headed in 2025. AI-driven systems to alert not only carriers but merchants themselves to potential delays or exceptions positively impact the bottom line and build trust with consumers who are now depending on the reliability of deliveries to choose which brands earn their loyalty.

Personalized delivery windows are at the top if there's a short list of impactful insights from the state of retail from the past few years. Speed alone is no longer enough. Modern consumers now value flexibility and convenience just as much as rapid delivery—and that ranking also varies by product type. Even at the SKU level, personalized delivery windows have become a key differentiator in the retail software market. According to recent surveys, 76% of shoppers say they are likelier to choose a retailer that offers customized delivery options over one that doesn't. Consumers are ordering from merchants who can adapt to their lifestyle and schedule, in addition to product, price, and availability.

Cutting-edge retailers now use technologies to analyze location data, traffic patterns, delivery address scoring, and individual customer preferences to offer precise delivery windows. These omnichannel delivery options can be as specific as hour-to-hour or as flexible as splitting carts between home delivery, curbside, or pick-up at third-party secure locker locations.

Merchants in the grocery sector have been innovating personalized delivery to expand channels while positively impacting their regions' communities. “Even pre-COVID, [many areas of Pittsburgh could qualify as food deserts] with no physical grocery store in that neighborhood,” said Heather Feather, Senior Director of Enterprise Strategy, eCommerce, and Innovation at Giant Eagle. “But we saw that home delivery could be an option for those customers. And so we essentially mapped out that specific area, and have tied that into our front end so that those customers get free delivery.”

Analyzing this data at the merchant level and leveraging it to improve the customer experience reduces the likelihood of missed deliveries and porch-pirated theft. It's proving to be a win-win for merchants: fewer failed delivery attempts mean lower costs and happier customers.

Using AI tools and advanced solutions to monitor customer preference and inventory awareness is vital to meeting expectations while managing costs in a high-volume environment. Different products require different approaches. Due to high consumer demand, electronics and apparel, for instance, are often prioritized for two-day shipping. In contrast, less time-sensitive items like furniture or home goods can follow a more cost-effective schedule. However, these deliveries must be accurately visible to the consumer and merchant operation teams.

Advanced orchestration platforms solve this by integrating with warehouse management systems to ensure every order is processed, packed, and shipped efficiently.

The path forward will require collaboration across the entire eCommerce ecosystem. Merchants, carriers, and technology providers must collaborate to build resilient systems prioritizing speed, security, and customer engagement. Integrating these data can provide a more holistic view of the supply chain, enabling faster and more informed decision-making at the operations level.

Ultimately, the success of the eCommerce industry in 2025 will depend on its ability to adapt to these evolving demands.

Merchants can turn challenges into opportunities by investing in innovative orchestration platforms that combine visibility, inventory awareness, personalized delivery options, and customer engagement. It's not just the current state of the market but the new standard moving forward.