Areas of operation of selected public postal operators in the EU – including logistics services
Postal operators, operating in a competitive environment, are forced to constantly seek an effective product and service offering. The choice of its variant by service providers, theoretically speaking, can range from offering a very limited number of services (e.g., traditional: letter mail, postal parcels, postal money orders) to a large number of them (e.g., introducing a wide range of electronic, logistics, and financial services). Practice shows that the scope of diversification of offered services is very varied. However, it can be assumed that its basic directions, apart from universal services, primarily include: selected logistics services, courier services via the Internet, e-commerce, and banking and direct marketing services.
Postal operators, operating in a competitive environment, are forced to constantly seek an effective product and service offering. The choice of its variant by service providers, theoretically speaking, can range from offering a very limited number of services (e.g., traditional: letter mail, postal parcels, postal money orders) to a large number of them (e.g., introducing a wide range of electronic, logistics, and financial services). Practice shows that the scope of diversification of offered services is very varied. However, it can be assumed that its basic directions, apart from universal services, primarily include: selected logistics services, courier services via the Internet, e-commerce, and banking and direct marketing services.
A synthetic overview of service diversification by postal operators is presented in Table 1. Under the influence of the liberalization of the postal services market in the European Union, public operators with a strong market position are also entering foreign markets with their activities. Examples of such actions are public postal services in Germany, Austria, Great Britain, and Sweden. An analysis of the activity of public operators in foreign markets indicates that they are interested in four basic areas, which are presented in Table 2. The analysis of the data contained in Table 2 shows that the German operator is the most active, operating in all segments of the postal services market, including the logistics services segment. Most other public postal operators in EU countries are not present in all segments of the studied postal services market. This is a result of a weak position in the European postal services market and the adopted development strategy, ownership structure, as well as a lack of financial resources for foreign investments.
In European Union countries, the letter mail market continues to be the largest and most attractive segment of activity for public postal operators. This market has almost always been characterized by continuous demand growth. However, forecasts by the Universal Postal Union indicate that demand for this type of service will gradually decline after 2009. The development of electronic mail will have a major impact on the reduction in the volume of traditional letter mail. Hence, the decline in letter mail volume will occur especially in highly developed countries with a high degree of information technology utilization. Table 3 estimates the minimum percentage growth and decline in the number of letter mail items in the perspective up to 2009 and 2014 in selected EU countries. The analysis of the estimated data presented in Table 3 confirms forecasts indicating a large development potential of the Polish, Czech, and Slovak letter mail markets, i.e., countries with medium economic development. A significant decline can also be observed in wealthier countries, including the Austrian, Spanish, Swedish, and German markets. Currently, however, the group of postal operators providing the largest number of letter mail items in the EU comes from countries that have a high level of GDP per capita. Conversely, in countries with lower GDP, their number is significantly smaller. Table 4 estimates the number of letter mail items (in millions of units) in selected EU countries in the years 2001 – 2003. Table 5 presents the number of letter mail items per person. The comparison shows that the number of letter mail items per person in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic is the lowest among the analyzed countries. Table 6 presents the number of letter mail items per 100 euros of gross national income in the years 2001 – 2003. The comparison shows that the analyzed indicator for Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic is above the average for the selected countries. It can therefore be assumed that in the event of an improvement in economic results, the number of letter mail items should gradually approach the EU average.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka”, No. 2/2006.