Small Iowa businesses struggling to compete with giants like Amazon might consider what’s called crowd-shipping, where customers — who are not store employees — would be asked to deliver merchandise ordered online in exchange for a reward. University of Iowa business analytics professor Jeff Ohlmann is studying the crowd-shipping concept and says it seems unconventional to ask a customer to make a delivery, but it could work in some circumstances.
“People are always looking for side hustles, and if you can make a little extra money doing very minimal effort, that’s kind of what this is targeted at, it’s that type of individual,” Ohlmann says. “Of course, there’s other individuals who might have a carload of kids and they’re like, ‘No way, in fact, I need a crowd-shipper for myself.'”
Customers who make the delivery might be compensated with a gift card or some other incentive, but Ohlmann says they’d first need to be registered and screened.
“The crowd-shipping program would have to be done something like somebody who would enroll and be vetted, much like a customer loyalty program, where that store in some sense knows that person and has vetted them,” Ohlmann says. “It’s not just any random shopper who walks into the store and says, ‘Hey, I’ll deliver a package.'”
A recent UI study looked at how much crowd-shipping would be needed to cut delivery costs enough to make it worthwhile. He says it could lower costs and cut delivery times if even five-percent of in-store shoppers agreed to make deliveries that extend their trip home by up to 30 minutes. The idea might make some people uneasy, but Ohlmann says times are changing, and so are traditions.
“Currently, we have Door Dashers and Uber Eats and people delivering food that are essentially non-uniformed individuals and so it’s not that much of a stretch, in that regard,” Ohlmann says. “Depending on the scenario, if you’re going to leave a package on a porch and just notify the person, there doesn’t have to be any interaction if you don’t want there to be.”
Crowd-shipping isn’t just for mom-and-pop businesses either. He says corporations like Walmart, Target and Home Depot are all trying out similar pilot projects.
