Dutch webshop Bol.com will only start shipping orders for free starting from €25 from now on, citing too high costs to keep the threshold at €20 – where it had been for over ten years.
Bol is one of the best-known online shops in Belgium and the Netherlands, partly because of its free shipping.
"We have used the €20 threshold since 2012. In that period that amount has never been indexed to inflation. At the same time, logistics costs did rise. That is why we decided to raise the shipping threshold," spokesperson Joost Morel explained on Flemish radio.
The company added that it wants to make customers aware that ordering multiple products at once is better than placing several orders of one product at a time. "We hope this will allow us to keep the number of transport movements between the distribution centre and the customer as low as possible."
Credit: Bol.com
KU Leuven Professor of Marketing Els Bruegelmans explained that it is not a coincidence that Bol is raising this threshold now, as consumers have started accepting that everything is getting more expensive. "From our energy bill to our food prices: everything has gone up recently. People find that more normal now than a while ago."
Companies such as Bol, but Amazon or Zalando as well, made it normal for consumers not to have to pay shipping costs, Bruegelmans said. "They set the rules of the game and the smaller players have to follow or they lose customers."
Additionally, shipping is never really free: when offering the service, sellers using the platform either pay that cost or the company cuts into its own profit margin. "An increasing number of big players are struggling with the whole system," said Breugelmans.
Therefore, they are coming up with ways to recuperate some of those costs and getting customers to spend more by raising the free shipping threshold is one of them. "And we see that it works: people will often go a little over that amount just to get that free shipping. Some online shops also offer subscriptions: subscribed customers never pay shipping costs."
Exception for books
From now on, the online shop is making one exception to this rule: Bol will always ship Dutch-language books for free. "We started in 1999 as one of the first online bookshops in Europe. Books are in our DNA."
In 2020, the store started the Bollebozen initiative to create equal opportunities for children in Flanders and the Netherlands. "We donate books and organise events to stimulate children's reading pleasure. Now, we are taking the next step by shipping Dutch-language books for free from now on."
