How Rising Consumer Expectations Impact the Supply Chain

The new reality: customer experience is the supply chain

Warehouses and retailers can no longer think of supply chains as “back-end operations.”

Today, customer experience is the supply chain. Faster delivery, broader choice and seamless service are what win loyalty - and that puts logistics performance at the center of revenue growth.

Global ecommerce is expected to grow to $6.8 trillion by 2028 (Forrester, 2024), with consumers demanding speed, convenience, and visibility as standard. Meeting these expectations is the price of staying competitive.

What’s driving rising consumer expectations?

Customer expectations have been reshaped by the promises of leading brands:

• Amazon Prime made two-day shipping a baseline.

• Same-day grocery delivery has become mainstream in urban markets.

• Click-and-collect has blurred the lines between online and in-store.

Competitors now raise the bar every season. Customers don’t just compare you with peers in your sector; they compare you with the best service they’ve experienced anywhere.

The Risk of Standing Still

It’s important to recognize that expectations don’t plateau. Once raised, they rarely move backwards. A 2025 Gartner survey revealed that 76 percent of supply chain executives now face more frequent disruptions than they did three years prior;  leaving them vulnerable to churn when customers face late orders or poor visibility.

Remaining static is not an option. Companies that rely on old playbooks risk:

• Declining satisfaction scores.
• Shrinking repeat purchases.
• Eroding long-term loyalty.

Insights from the Infios consumer study

In Infios’s End User Study (Winter 2021), consumers ranked the following as top priorities when shopping online:

• Order accuracy.
• Multiple delivery options.
• Transparent visibility.
• On-time shipments.

These findings remain highly relevant today. In fact, a 2025 McKinsey analysis revealed thatrevealed that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions from companies, and 76% are likely to switch providers if the experience doesn’t meet expectations.

From pandemic shifts to permanent habits

COVID-19 accelerated ecommerce adoption, and many of those habits are here to stay:

• Before the pandemic, 58% of consumers preferred in-store shopping. By late 2021, this dropped to 28%.
• Online home delivery grew from 19% pre-pandemic to 44% during the same period.
• Even as restrictions lifted, hybrid shopping patterns (click-and-collect, subscriptions, recurring delivery) have become embedded.

The message is clear: convenience is now the default.

Turning rising expectations into an advantage

Yes, rising consumer expectations add pressure. But for companies that invest in modern, flexible execution, they’re also a growth engine.

Infios helps businesses:

• Optimize warehouses with intelligent WMS.
• Connect transportation and order flows for end-to-end visibility.
• Build resilience into supply chain execution so that disruptions don’t reach the customer.

In an era where experience equals loyalty, the supply chain is your most powerful differentiator.