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

Figure 3: Millions of Online Shoppers in Saudi Arabia, 2016-2022 (Source: Statista, 2020) The LMD market has seen a surge of new start- up entries in recent years, with the majority of them operating on an asset-light strategy and focusing on empowering small businesses by providing shipping services via crowd sourced couriers. Both regional and international investors are interested in the area. The rise in the number of players is due to more than only the pandemic and following e-commerce boom. In fact, the greatest significant increase in start-up entrants occurred before to Covid-19 in 2019, when 28 new firms, particularly in the courier industry, were founded. Wamda (2021) mapped 102 last-mile delivery firms, and 67 of them use the courier model. With rising competitions in the region, usage of technology has been increasing in the country (Wamda, 2021). Figure 4: Size of Saudi Arabia’s LMD Express and Same Day Delivery Market (Source: Yadav and Mutreja, 2022) The question of whether to insource or outsource delivery is a key one. In comparison to regular procurement methods, quick technological investment costs more. This research will further explore and try to find answers to this question (Rowan and Laffey, 2020). Figure 5 illustrates the forecasted comparison of LMD market by service type. It can be noted that B2B market share in 2020 was 57.9% which is forecasted to shrink to 10.5 11.6 12.9 14.4 16 17.7 19.3 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 46.8 50.7 55.1 59.9 65.2 71.1 77.7 85.2 93.7 102.9 113.6 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 An Assessment of the Last Mile Delivery Market in Saudi Arabia during and Post COVID-19 © 2023 Global Journals 72 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXIII Issue II Version I Year 2023 ( ) A An important trend due to increase in online shopping behaviour is the demand of same day or express courier shipping in LMD has been forecasted by Yadav and Mutreja (2022). Figure 4 shows Saudi Arabia’s LMD express and same day delivery market size to be $46.8 million in 2020 which is forecasted to reach $113.6 million by 2030 registering a CAGR of 9.4%.