Global Journal of Management and Business Research, A: Administration and Management, Volume 23 Issue 2

An Assessment of the Last Mile Delivery Market in Saudi Arabia during and Post COVID-19 81 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXIII Issue II Version I Year 2023 ( ) A © 2023 Global Journals important trend due to increase in online shopping behaviour is the demand of same day or express courier shipping in Saudi Arabia (Yadav and Mutreja, 2022). The results in this section also come together to support other forecasts and identification of driving factors in the LMD market in Saudi Arabia, including technological advancements in delivery vehicles, surge in adoption of autonomous delivery that reinforces demand, and increase in the number of urban warehouses to meet demand (Yadav and Mutreja, 2022). V. C onclusion This research has focused on LMD, which is the final step in the supply chain and continues the most expensive aspect of providing home delivery. In Saudi Arabia, development of the LMD market became an integral part of its 2030 vision as the Kingdom has positioned itself to become the new logistics hub for the Middle East (Vision 2030, 2022). In order to contribute to this area in both an academic and practical way, this research provided an analysis of the LMD market and addressed the challenges that companies may face. Further, Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increase in online shopping and home delivery and this research has examined how companies reacted strategically during and post Covid-19 to adapt to the demand trends. The research question was: How have LMD companies been adapting to market trends during and after Covid-19? In order to answer this question, the first objective of this study was to provide an overview of the LMD market in Saudi Arabia during and after Covid-19 and examine how this has influenced the LMD industry in Saudi Arabia. The research shows increased demand for e-commerce and delivery services overall, consistent with the worldwide trend, as consumers were unable to shop directly from stores. While this demand was primarily driven by the pandemic, it is expected that this demand would remain high after the pandemic ends. However, there appear to be permanent changes in how people are shopping as well as an evolution of payments in Saudi Arabia, with the cash-as-payment culture in Saudi Arabia identified by Yadav and Mutreja (2022) being challenged by the need to embrace other forms of payment that can facilitate e-commerce in particular. This is an area for future research as this project was unable to investigate these kinds of changes in-depth but this is likely to have significant implications for the industry going forward. For the second research objective, which was to examine the challenges companies faced during the pandemic and might face while entering the LMD market in Saudi Arabia. The research showed implementation challenges faced by the companies as a result of both government changes and insufficient capacity. There were both internal and external responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the government responses appearing to work against the industry and is an issue that needs further examination. Internally, the companies used a range of strategies or seemed that they intended to do so. Important among these were technological solutions but a key caution was the availability of the resources and whether companies were willing to invest these resources. However, the companies that do well in Saudi Arabia’s LMD industry are likely to be those that make the necessary changes to meet the growing need for express delivery by local consumers, which includes greater investment in technology and infrastructure such as warehouses. 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