Post on it's Retour

Abstract

This graduation assignment was commissioned by PostNL. PostNL is the biggest postal and parcel service in the Netherlands. At this moment, PostNL consists of three main branches: mail, international and parcel. Mail is the big cash cow that needs to be kept as healthy as possible for as long as possible. Part of PostNL’s strategy to realise this, is to find new markets and extent their current services. The assignment focuses on the market of sending ‘offline postcards’ that PostNL serves. This market is mature and declining due to new technologies to communicate and our changing behaviour in communication. Though, these offline postcards are still worth 200mln euros of revenue a year. For years the stamp has been the method of payment for using the delivery service of PostNL. To compensate for the decreasing market this stamp will be increasing in price and there will be cut backs of costs that influence the values of the traditional offline postal service for the consumer. This is where the challenge for PostNL emerges to stay relevant and keep a good value-price ratio for the consumer. This project investigates what aspects could make the current postal service more relevant for the consumer and subsequently aims to design a service increasing this relevance in order to balance the volume decline of the postal market.