Investigating customers’ switching intention from home pickup to smart locker delivery: A case of shopee in Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

In recent years, the trend of international integration and economic transformation after the Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to the rapid growth of e-commerce in Vietnam. This has put enormous pressure on last-mile delivery services providers, leading to unnecessary errors and damage to their reputation. In this situation, smart lockers have emerged as a novel solution to help control online orders more closely, thereby optimizing last-mile delivery operations. However, this is still a new delivery method and the usage rate is not high due to customers' concerns and worries about information security, personal property as well as the convenience it brings. In Ho Chi Minh City, consumers still prefer to choose the traditional home pickup delivery instead of smart locker delivery. Therefore, this study was conducted to understand customers' intention to switch from home pickup to smart locker delivery, the case of Shopee in Ho Chi Minh City. Based on the Push-Pull-Mooring theoretical framework, we built a research model consisting of appropriate variables. Then, we conducted a questionnaire survey in Ho Chi Minh City. The collected data and 492 valid responses were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and SmartPLS 4.0 software. The results showed that the low perceived value of home pickup service and the attractiveness of smart lockers had a positive impact on customers' switching intention. In addition, factors such as failed delivery, time risk, and perceived price contributed positively to the low perceived value of home pickup delivery, and factors such as reliability, convenience, and privacy contributed positively to the attractiveness of smart lockers. We also found that the impact of inertia in using home pickup service was insignificant on the switching intention of Shopee customers in Ho Chi Minh City. The research results have important implications for an e-commerce business as Shopee in formulating appropriate policies to effectively promote customers' switching intentions during the implementation of their own smart locker system