Any business can now move, store, and deliver everything from raw materials to finished products quickly and reliably, using the same supply chain that supports Amazon.com. Retail, wholesale, and commercial businesses of all sizes now have access to the same logistics capabilities that have supported Amazon’s growth for decades.

These services were originally developed to power Amazon’s own retail operations and to support independent selling partners worldwide. Over the past three years, hundreds of thousands of Amazon sellers have trusted the company’s logistics network to move, store, and deliver hundreds of millions of packages across third-party facilities, warehouses, and sales channels beyond the Amazon store. The launch of ASCS builds on this momentum, now supporting third-party logistics for businesses in industries such as healthcare, automotive, manufacturing, and retail.

This survey report reveals that while organizations understand the importance of last mile delivery, operational transformation still hasn’t followed. The last mile has changed, but many organizations are still treating last-mile delivery as a cost center, tracking metrics like cost per delivery, carrier rates, and route efficiency without considering the customer experience. 

It’s an approach that doesn’t reflect reality. For many customers, delivery is now the only part of the supply chain they actually experience—and it directly shapes whether they return.

This report synthesizes consumer behavior and other market insights across a dozen major destination markets in Europe, North America and Australia, some of Landmark Global’s key destination countries, to help e-tailers understand where expectations converge, where operational choices matter most, and how e-logistics performance increasingly determines success in cross-border expansion.

What you’ll find inside:

Increasingly, shoppers aren’t beginning their journey on a retailer’s website. Instead, they’re asking ChatGPT what to buy. They’re scrolling TikTok Shop. They’re clicking marketplace recommendations. According to Gartner, by the end of 2026, traditional search engine volume is expected to decline by 25 percent as consumers shift toward artificial intelligence chatbots and other virtual agents for discovery. That means the front door of commerce is no longer controlled by the retailer.

At first glance, the world seems to be pulling apart. But the data tells a different story. The world is not disconnecting – its connections are evolving. Explore the latest findings in the 2026 DHL Global Connectedness Report. The world finds itself in a period of profound geopolitical and economic uncertainty. For leaders in both the public and private sectors, volatility has become a part of daily decision-making. In such an environment, assumptions can be misleading – and facts matter more than ever.

If your fashion brand is scaling fast, fulfilment is often the first place where cracks begin to show. What once worked with a single warehouse, a handful of markets and manageable order volumes quickly becomes a bottleneck as international demand, delivery expectations and returns volumes increase.

One thing’s for sure: fulfilment is no longer just a back-office function for ambitious brands in the fashion space. It’s a defining part of how businesses scale, compete and protect margins.

As the retail market continues to change and e-commerce becomes more dominant, delivery disruptions have evolved from isolated inconveniences into signs of deeper structural issues across the supply chain.

These challenges are no longer confined to the last mile; instead, they often stem from fragmented upstream systems, inventory mismatches, and poor coordination between distribution, carriers and customer support. With more than 120 million packages stolen from U.S. porches last year and up to 15% of deliveries in urban areas failing to arrive, retailers face mounting pressure to protect margins and maintain customer trust.

Imagine this: you’re a retail executive enjoying a steady partnership with a major parcel carrier, when suddenly the ground shifts beneath your feet. In 2026, that’s not a hypothetical scenario, it’s exactly what’s happening in the delivery world. UPS is dramatically cutting the volume of Amazon packages it carries, FedEx is overhauling its network and even delivering on Sundays, and upstart regional carriers like OnTrac and Veho are racing to fill gaps with new services. It’s a wake-up call for European merchants: the era of relying on a single carrier is over. In a volatile market, ​​ multi‑carrier contingency isn’t just a cost hack, it’s a strategic necessity for resilience and growth.