Cross-border e-commerce: 61% want clear delivery fees

An international shipping offer has more opportunities for misunderstanding than a domestic one. A customer may recognize the product price but not the delivery method, the currency or what happens if another charge is requested. The research question is therefore broader than whether people like free transport. It also concerns whether they can understand and trust the offer.

For your webshop, distinguish the buyer’s international purchase from the parcel’s physical route. Someone can buy from a foreign business while receiving a parcel from stock already held nearby. That distinction helps explain why a shopper survey cannot, by itself, tell you how many parcels must cross a border or what route your next order should take.

Whose cross-border purchases does IPC measure? #

IPC published its 2025 findings on 13 January 2026 after September 2025 fieldwork. The study had 30,970 respondents across 37 countries. Participants were frequent cross-border shoppers who had bought physical goods online recently and made an international online purchase during the previous year. Treat those selection conditions as part of every finding, not as a footnote to discard.

A selected shopper population can describe its own recent experiences. It cannot establish how all households shop, what share of a national retail market is international or the value of every cross-border transaction. If you need those answers, choose a dataset built for them. Relabelling a consumer survey as a global sales estimate gives it a scope it never claimed.

Use the results to identify questions worth checking in your own destination markets. Look at how your first-time buyers discover the delivered total, recognize the carrier and choose a delivery location. Then inspect your own order records. A broad international sample helps frame the investigation; the particular route still needs a current quotation.

Which headline numbers are easiest to misread? #

When sharing a statistic internally, keep its unit in the sentence. Orders, shoppers, parcels and sales value are not interchangeable. A marketplace with many small purchases can appear prominently in a latest-order question without representing the same share of spending. A delivery location on a completed order also does not reveal which unavailable alternative the buyer would have preferred.

Avoid subtracting a domestic benchmark from an international survey and calling the difference the cost of crossing a border. The populations, products and questions may differ. A useful operational comparison holds the packed order and destination constant, then examines feasible services from each origin. Research can explain the commercial concern; it does not replace that matched comparison.

Does free delivery remove the need for a recognizable carrier? #

DHL’s separate 2026 delivery findings report that free delivery would encourage international purchases for 57% of global shoppers, while delivery by a trusted provider would encourage them for 31%. These are different stated incentives. They do not show that one feature substitutes for the other or that their percentages can be combined into an expected conversion gain.

Make the actual service legible. A customer should understand who handles the parcel, where it will be delivered and which tracking information to expect. If a collection point is the supported service, name that delivery mode clearly. A cheaper label is not a useful saving if the customer thought they selected a different destination type.

Compare your product page, delivery selector and confirmation together. They should describe the same offer. A global free-shipping banner followed by country exclusions at payment creates unnecessary uncertainty. State eligibility where buyers first encounter the offer, and let them check their destination without completing an order.

What does a complete local-fulfilment comparison include? #

AirPost’s platform constant, checked on 19 October 2026, is €0.85 per shipment. Add the recommended small-parcel sender fee of €2.25 and these components total €3.10 before the domestic carrier label, packaging and other costs. The agreed sender fee can differ from the recommendation.

Compare direct international fulfilment against the whole local alternative. Include the cost of sending stock to the local sender and allocate it over the stock actually dispatched. Keep unsold stock, retrieval and handling requirements visible. A low domestic label price cannot justify ignoring the earlier stock movement.

A useful boundary follows without inventing a label price: the reduction in carrier cost must first cover €3.10 of these example local components, plus any extra stock transport and materials, before it becomes a saving against an otherwise equivalent route. Account for preparation costs already present in your current process so you do not count the same work twice.

Through AirPost local fulfilment, a webshop can place stock with someone near its buyers who prepares orders and hands parcels in at a parcel point. Check actual sender and service availability for the destination. A local dispatch arrangement does not by itself settle tax obligations or guarantee that your preferred carrier is available.

How do you audit the delivery offer before opening a new market? #

1. 1

   Select a real packed product profile

   Use the final outside dimensions and weight. Keep the same suitable basket for the direct-route and local-route comparison.

2. 2

   Check what the buyer can see

   Follow the destination through the product page, cart and checkout. Note the first clear delivery total, delivery mode and any conditions.

3. 3

   Verify both operational routes

   Confirm service availability from each origin and whether stock can be prepared at the intended location. Record actual quotations rather than national averages.

4. 4

   Build the complete contribution comparison

   Add the costs that change, including preparation and stock movements. Separate unknown figures from known ones and include expected after-sales work.

5. 5

   Review completed outcomes

   Compare contribution, delivery performance and customer questions for the eligible destination. Keep the research statistic as context rather than a predicted uplift.

The audit should produce a customer-facing explanation and an internal cost sheet that agree. If the explanation promises home delivery, the quoted service must support it. If the cost sheet assumes local stock, that stock must be available before you show the arrival expectation. Resolve those mismatches before assessing whether a promotional delivery charge is attractive.

Which records make the expansion decision reviewable later? #

Save the route, packed profile, quotation date and the version of the offer customers saw. Record the stock allocation used in the cost comparison. These details let you revisit the decision if prices or service availability change. Without them, a later colleague may compare a new quotation with an old promise and mistake the difference for a trend.

For the separate transport calculation, consult the domestic and international shipping comparison. The European parcel cost guide explains how to examine suitable routes. Neither turns an international consumer survey into a forecast for your next market; your offer and completed orders remain the deciding evidence.