Cazals, Catherine, Magnac, Thierry, Pope, Jonathan and Soteri, Soterios (2023) UK Parcel Market Trends in the Pre- and Post-COVID Environment: An Initial Assessment. In: Postal Strategies: Logistics, Access, and the Environment Parcu, Pier Luigi, Brennan, Timothy J. and Glass, Victor (eds.) Springer Nature Switzerland. Series “Topics in Regulatory Economics and Policy” Cham pp. 313-326. ISBN 9783031253621

Abstract

Due to the COVID crisis, the parcel market has undergone a significant increase in volumes over the last two years. Postal operators are facing a challenge in their organization to cope with this change. Therefore, understanding parcel market key trends and the magnitude of the post-COVID uplift in volumes play an important role in terms of influencing both short and long-term business decisions. In this paper, we examine domestic UK parcel volumes prior to and during the COVID crisis to assess the extent to which there has been a structural change in the demand for parcels. In particular, we examine the properties of an econometric time series model that accounts for parcel volume movements prior to COVID related effects, how this model performed during the pre-COVID crises and then go on to re-estimate the model using Google mobility data to better account for COVID-related impacts. By comparing the properties of the within-sample model predictions we obtain estimates of the extent to which COVID has impacted domestic UK parcel volumes.