Delivering On Demand: How Many Days Is Too Many?

As e-commerce became ubiquitous over the last few years, consumers consistently kept lowering what they considered an acceptable delivery wait time for free shipping further and further. This trend may now be stabilizing.

Consumers appear to be settling at just over three days of wait time on deliveries with free shipping, around the same as in 2021. 

In 2012 the acceptable delivery time was five-and-a-half days, and it had been on a downward trajectory ever since. For a typical shipper with a multi-node regional network, one-day fulfillment plus two-day ground shipping is very achievable and, in many instances, potentially even cost-effective. As things stand, however, anything below three days exceeds the capability of most delivery networks to make free shipping economically viable even after raising the minimum spend threshold. This year's result, then, is good news.