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If You Don’t Offer Same-Day Shipping, You’re Pissing Off 56 Percent of Millennials

The problem? Only 4 percent of the top 50 online retailers have same-day delivery as a core option in their checkout processes.

William Perugini/Shutterstock
Jason Del Rey
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.

They want it all, but they can’t have it.

Fifty-six percent of online shoppers ages 18 to 34 expect to have same-day shipping as an option when they buy stuff online, according to a recent survey from fraud prevention startup Trustev. The problem? Only 4 percent of the Top 50 online retailers have same-day delivery as a core option in their checkout processes across the country, the company found. And less than half — 48 percent, to be precise — offer guaranteed next-day delivery as a main feature, said Trustev.

The findings won’t be all that surprising to e-commerce industry insiders, but they do shine a light on the growing disparity between the expectations of certain demographics of shoppers and current retailer offerings. They also highlight the competitive advantage Amazon is building as it expands its free same-day delivery option for Prime members, now available in 14 metropolitan areas, and rolls out its even speedier one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in more locations.

Beyond Amazon, Trustev found that 1-800-Flowers was the only other top online retailer that offered a same-day service broadly. The flower seller partners with the delivery startup Deliv to power the service, as do Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s in a growing number of cities.

Apple also offers the service on some products in some cities through Postmates, the delivery startup that has landed several other huge partnerships this year. Not to be outdone, Uber is also prepping the launch of a same-day delivery service with retailers, too.

So why is a fraud prevention startup interested in this trend? Trustev CEO Pat Phelan says the time it takes to do manual fraud checks by some retailers is a big reason some don’t ship orders out as quickly as they could. Trustev thinks its technology can help. Fraud losses as a percentage of revenue for big e-commerce sites grew to 1.32 percent in 2015, according to a new report from LexisNexis, up from 0.85 percent last year.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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