Explanatory (Causal) Research. Effects of Last-Mile Delivery Challenges on E-Commerce Growth in Lagos State

Abstract

Over the last few years, Lagos State has seen a growth of e-commerce, but the last-mile delivery problems of traffic, poor road networks, high delivery costs, and inefficient address systems have resulted in a delivery snarl. These unfulfilled delivery systems negatively impact e-commerce customer retention and the profitability of e-commerce ventures. Even so, these snarl systems impact e-commerce in Lagos State as a result of their inefficiencies on in the logistics systems and customer trust. Using a survey research design, e-commerce customers and logistics providers from all of Lagos State were sampled, resulting in a sample size of 384 customers, traced with structured questionnaires. These were analyzed, with the predictions checked, by simple descriptive and multiple regression analytical systems. The multiple regression shows B = 0.642, t = 7.735, p = 0.000 (< 0.05). Since p < 0.05, the Ho was rejected, and H1 is accepted. The results indicate that last-mile delivery systems do influence the growth of e-commerce systems in Lagos State. The study concludes that although Lagos has systemic infrastructural bottlenecks, firm-level strategies like technology use, flexible delivery systems, and contracts with local courier agents help alleviate some of the challenges. As a result, the study proposes that governmental and private infrastructure deficit stakeholders engage on the integration of novel infrastructural bottlenecks, more e-Commerce and Logistics providers need to be equipped and invested in automated systems like the real-time delivery tracking systems. More firms should integrate active and passive delivery systems within one system, amongst others