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Introduction
Online retail sales have grown rapidly in many developed countries. For example, between 1999 and 2005 online retail sales grew with 720 percent in the UK, 1,060 percent in Germany, and 1,403 percent in The Netherlands ([35] Weltevreden, 2007a). Despite these impressive growth figures, the proportion of online retail sales compared to total retail sales was only 3.1, 3.8, and 2.8 percent, respectively, in 2005 ([35] Weltevreden, 2007a). However, by 2012 more than 10 percent of all retail sales in The Netherlands will be online sales, as the rapid expansion of online shopping is expected to continue in the future ([35] Weltevreden, 2007a).
The increasing popularity of online shopping leads to a growing amount of delivery vehicles in residential areas to deliver the packages to consumers' homes. For example, in the UK approximately 540 million parcels were shipped to online shoppers in 2006 ([16] IMRG, 2006). As home delivery increases, so does the number of failed deliveries. Many parcels do not fit through mail- or letterboxes or require consignee signature, which implies that customers need to be at home when the parcel is delivered. However, often consumers are not at home when a package is delivered, which leads to increased delivery cost as the packages need to be redelivered or returned to the sender. [16] IMRG (2006) estimated that the direct costs of failed deliveries in 2006 in the UK were [euro]682 million.
Recently, collection-and-delivery points (CDPs) where customers can collect and return their online orders have emerged as a solution for home delivery failure ([11], [12] Foresight, 2000, 2001; [1] Browne, 2001; [2] Browne et al. , 2001; [25] Nemoto et al. , 2001; [3] Brummelman et al. , 2003; [8], [9] Fernie and McKinnon, 2003, 2004; [22] McKinnon and Tallam, 2003; [23] McLeod et al. , 2006). For carriers delivering a package to a CDP after a first-time delivery failure may save time and fuel, as they need not anymore visit a home for a second or a third time to make a successful delivery. In addition, when CDPs are located near residential locations (e.g. at local stores, schools, etc.) or at areas that already generate consumers trips (e.g. petrol stations, railway stations, etc.) little additional travel by consumers will be...