Online shopping is on the rise and it certainly isn’t going away anytime soon. Major retailers and brands have set up their own online stores to supplement revenues from brick and mortar stores. Customers now have less reasons to go to a physical store when they can simply get what they need delivered to them. However with FedEx’s planned pricing change the world of online shopping might be hit hard.
The company has said that starting January next year it plans to apply “dimensional weight pricing” to all ground shipments. FedEx currently charges for packages based on weight but with this change it will start charging for packages based on their size. It remains to be seen if UPS goes down the same road, and if it does, e-commerce would have a tough time.
Customers could end up paying substantially more for items that aren’t as heavy but might be large when bought in bulk, items like toilet paper or diapers are often replenished and happen to be some of the most common items ordered online. Analysts believe after this change free or cheap shipping of large yet light convenience items might be phased out because it would simply be too expensive.
Someone will have to bear the increased shipping costs. Its possible that merchants might start charging more for products to cover for the shipping since they would hesitate in increasing shipping charges. Survey show that online customers are likely to abandon their shopping carts at the checkout stage if they feel that the shipping costs are too high.
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