Claire Borsenberger

The Concentration Phenomenon in E-commerce

The universality of the Internet led experts to expect markets to expand and the range of products and services to proliferate, making Internet-related markets more transparent and competitive. Electronic commerce, in particular, has been seen as an opportunity for retailers to expand their market over a geographically limited customer catchment area. For example, Poon and Jevons (1997) were amongst the first to recognize the potential benefits that the Internet offered to retailers, suggesting that it “creates an unprecedented opportunity for businesses to engage in national and international marketing campaigns that previously would have been unaffordable” (p. 29). This would tend to reduce their (local) market power and increase the intensity of competition. But in many Internet-related markets, only few businesses have emerged, and often one actor is in a dominant position. This phenomenon is observed in the B2C e-commerce market all around the world. In countries where online commerce is relatively well developed, such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the USA and even China, despite a large number of merchant sites, the online selling business is highly concentrated around a few major actors and appears to be more concentrated than offline commerce.

Environmental Cost and Universal Service Obligations in the Postal Sector

This paper studies the relationship between USO and environmental concern in the postal sector. We concentrate on the obligation to deliver mail on a D+1 basis. We examine how the USO should be designed to properly account for the environmental cost in a variety of situations ranging from a first-best setting to a (Ramsey-type) second-best world with differentiated or uniform prices. We show that, it may be desirable to scale down the D+1 obligation and to restrict it to specific geographic areas. We also study how postal products should be priced to account for their environmental impact.

Personal Data and Privacy Issues and Postal Operators Stand

Data has become the raw material of production, a new source of considerable economic and social value. Advances in data mining and analytics, the massive increase in computing power and data storage capacity coupled with decreasing cost (falling by a factor of 6 since 2005 according to Podesta et al. 2014) and the increasing number of people, devices, and sensors that are now connected by digital networks and able to communicate with each other (“Internet of Things”) have revolutionized the ability to generate, communicate, share, and access data. According to the World Economic Forum (2011), 15 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2015 and 50 billion by 2020. The amount of data stored on the Internet is predicted to grow exponentially and looks set to be 44 times larger in 2020 than it was in 2009 (World Economic Forum (2011), figure 3, pp. 14).

Quality and Pricing of Delivery Services in the E-commerce Sector

We study the delivery market for e-commerce products, with two technologies: home delivery and delivery to a relay point. Taste differences for these are represented by a Hotelling model. Operators choose the (costly) quality of their delivery service. We study a single operator who uses both technologies and a duopoly with two single-technology operators. The home delivery operator may or may not be regulated; the relay operator is not regulated. We study pricing policies and the impact of competition on welfare. We also show that quality regulation may have an adverse effect on welfare.

Price comparisons in the parcel industry: a new approach based on the hedonic price theory

In our increasingly technology-focused world, demand for traditional postal services is steadily shrinking. This timely volume examines the many challenges that the worldwide postal sector is facing as a result of growing electronic competition, and offers expert recommendations for reshaping postal structures to strengthen their competitiveness in an electronic age.

The Pricing of Cross-Border Parcel Delivery Services

The role of parcel delivery services in cross-border e-commerce is a hotly debated topic within the EU and beyond. While volumes of domestic e-commerce have increased dramatically over the last years in all member States, cross-border purchases remain lower, even though the latest figures released by E-commerce Europe (2016) showed an acceleration of cross-border transactions. This can be explained by a variety of factors including language and cultural barriers and bureaucratic obstacles (in particular the complexity of VAT regimes—see E-commerce Europe last cross-border barometer) but also simply by the fact that goods are available on the domestic market without any significant price differential. The EU Commission has recently launched a proposal that focuses on parcel delivery services and particularly their pricing as an alleged major impediment for the development of cross-border e-commerce (European Commission 2016).

Are European Cross-Border Parcel Delivery Services Affordable?

The European Commission (EC) believes tariffs for parcel delivery services paid by low-volume senders (small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and individuals) are “too high” and are impeding e-commerce market development between EU Member States. In May, 2016, the EC released a proposal aimed at solving this problem. They notably proposed that national regulatory authorities assess the affordability of parcel delivery tariffs offered by national postal operators (NPOs) within their jurisdictions (article 5).The objective of this paper is to analyze the extent to which parcel delivery price affordability stimulates online exchanges between EU Member States. The novelty of this analysis is to view parcel delivery within a broader supply chain. After reviewing the economic literature on the meaning of affordability, this concept will be applied to parcel delivery services. Afterwards, the European Commission’s approach to affordability will be examined.

The Sharing Economy and the “Uberization” Phenomenon: What Impacts on the Economy in General and for the Delivery Operators in Particular?

The word “Uberization” comes from a service developed by the firm Uber, founded in San Francisco in 2009, active in 59 countries and more than 200 cities worldwide and valued at

Digital Identities: A Good Move for Postal Operators

62.5 billion at the end of 2015.

Differentiated pricing of delivery services in the e-commerce sector

For consumers, citizens, employees or even producers, digital identity is the passport to the vast online world of goods and services. With the growth of digital e-commerce transactions, communications, social networks, and connected objects, needs for both privacy and secure, reliable identification become both more and more crucial. Reliable digital identities provide a means of distinguishing an individual using attributes (age, gender, address, login, password, biometric data, and so on). This makes possible the development of online communities and online transactions.