Our friends at TradeMachines.com were kind enough to offer our readers their perspective on E-Commerce and Logistics and offer a cool new infographic that you may find very useful. Big thank you to Molly Connell at Trade Machines.com for her insight.

 This guest post is written by TradeMachines.com.  Article and opinions expressed below do not necessarily reflect the views and opinion of ICC Logistics Services. 

Global e-commerce sales made up more than $2 trillion this year and the U.S. segment is currently estimated to be worth over $400 billion. By 2022, this number should be over $600 billion which means a 50% growth rate within 5 years. Taking into consideration that the first online shopping system was only introduced in 1979, we can state that e-commerce is truly a rapidly growing market.

But other than its impressive development, there’s another factor that makes this industry very intriguing: Its impact on logistics.

The global logistics market is sized at approximately $8.1 trillion which is uncomprehendingly big and still, it is currently undergoing a major change thanks to the influence of e-commerce, an industry a quarter of its size.

Not only did e-commerce offer new opportunities to shop, it also changed our expectations of shopping. The internet enabled us customers to shop whenever and wherever we want and by now this has become the norm. We can choose from a large selection and with the ability to compare offers we can find the best price. What differentiates one offer from another is typically the delivery.

Nowadays, customers are asking new questions such as “Why shouldn’t I buy from abroad as long as it can be delivered?” or “Why would I pay for shipping when someone else offers it for free?” but probably the most common question is “Which retailer can deliver my package the fastest?”

Logistics market players are therefore currently in an intense race to adjust to the new expectations. Reliability, track-ability, and cost-effectiveness is the key to future success. Market leaders are installing innovations, for example, UPS has been testing high-tech drone trucks or Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company is constantly using bigger ships to be more energy efficient and to benefit from the Economy of Scale.

But traditional logistics companies are not the only ones working on gaining a better position in the market by improving themselves, newcomers are also interested in getting a piece of the pie.

Take a look at the following infographic to see how two giants, Amazon and Uber are expanding their business model into logistics. Will an Online Retailer and a Taxi App be the ones gaining the most from the restructuring of the industry?