Hands up those of you who love to go shopping? Now keep your hand up if you love trudging to a store on a Saturday morning, finding a parking spot, fighting your way through the crowds, not even finding what you wanted, and coming home feeling like you wasted half the day? It seems unlikely that there are many hands remaining now. There's no doubt that as consumers, we simply love having something brought to us. In the time it takes to finish our morning coffee, we could have purchased the week's groceries, a new jacket, and a novelty lampshade for the heck of it. If the price is right and someone brings it to us, then why not?
But it's not just consumers who are always thinking about home-delivered items, businesses are as well. And they're getting very creative with it. Not content with using delivery drones, Amazon is currently testing a new option that allows delivery people to access your hallway or garage to deliver a package, which combats the online shoppers' biggest hatred: missing a delivery when you're not at home. German company Media Markt is also trialling a new drone delivery program in Düsseldorf, yet in the form of cute little robots with wheels. Even Burger King is now starting to deliver to homes across Manchester, although not from wheeled robots unfortunately.
Bigger than this, however, is the explosion of online companies who are rising in popularity due to one simple fact: they deliver items to your home. A great product or service is of course helpful too, but especially for niche or bulky items, when the consumer has the option to click a button, fill out payment details, and lean back satisfied in their chair, more often than not they are going to take it. It used to be there was 'an app for that', but very quickly the situation is turning to 'there's a delivery service for that'
As for who is getting top scores in this home delivery test, there are some who easily stand out. Blue Apron is making cooking accessible and fun again, by sending just the items you need for that particular meal - no more frantically running around the supermarket for the ingredients, or ending up with ten cloves of garlic you don't know what to do with. Eve is eschewing everyone's favourite task of carrying a mattress upstairs, by delivering the item in a conveniently-sized box - look here if you don't believe an entire mattress can fit in a cardboard package. As for monthly shipments of assorted goods, Loot Crate (gamer and pop culture items), The Chapar (men's fashion), and Glossy Box (makeup and skincare) are all becoming fantastic reasons to save browsing and travel time by having your shopping delivered.
Some may well feel all these companies providing delivery options will result in no one ever leaving their home and ignoring the outside world, which isn't just an extreme scenario, but is ultimately untrue. Home delivery isn't forced upon us reluctantly, it's an option we can take when we have days where we just can't face going out the door. Put simply, it lets us shop for things that we may ordinarily avoid due to complicated transportation, and gives us the chance to enjoy our free time away from hectic shopping malls or talking to invariably unhelpful retail workers. Now, when was that novelty lampshade supposed to arrive?
