Beware of the customer: Managing customer deviance in last mile logistics

Kathrin Mayr, Richard Heininger, Christoph Teller and Christian Stary

International Journal of Production Economics, 2025, vol. 289, issue C

Abstract: Negative customer deviance, such as verbal aggression, excessive demands, illegitimate complaints or non-compliance from recipients (those who receive goods from a delivery person), within last mile logistics (LML), is detrimental to LML providers and their employees. Such behaviours undermine pivotal logistic capabilities, making the supply chain inefficient, waste resources and disrupt logistics service delivery. Current research corroborates the importance of upholding logistics service quality standards to support the growing e-commerce market and meet increasing customer expectations in a competitive market landscape. However, it overlooks the correspondence between this and negatively behaving recipients and their impact on LML employees. Therefore, logistics processes overlook negative customer deviance and fail to mitigate its negative impact.

Keywords: Customer deviance; Logistics service quality; Intelligent digital process twin; Design science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:289:y:2025:i:c:s0925527325002816

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2025.109796

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