Last-Mile Delivery Challenges in Bangladesh's E-Commerce Industry: A systematic Literature Review

Journal: Social lens

Publication: 2026-07-05

DOI: 10.69971/sl.3.2.2026.66

Abstract

In highly digitalizing South Asian markets, last mile delivery (LMD) is the most expensive, complex and customer facing part of the ecommerce supply chain. Current study is a systematic literature review of academic and grey literature covering the challenges of last mile delivery in e-commerce in Bangladesh from 2010-2026. A multi-source search using combinations of the terms “last-mile delivery”, “e-commerce”, “logistics”, “gig economy” and “Bangladesh” was undertaken with the assistance of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA 2020) framework. Given the limited number of indexed, peer-reviewed scholarship on the last-mile logistics specifically for the Bangladesh context, the review included a mix of peer-reviewed studies and high-quality institutional reports, regulatory documents and industry analyses – a hybrid approach recommended for systematic reviews of practice-driven and under-theorized topics in emerging markets. Of these, about 125 unique records were included in the thematic synthesis based on topical relevance, language eligibility and date (2010-2026), resulting in the retention of 46 sources. The review identified that there are eight interrelated thematic clusters of challenge: (1) infrastructural and geographic constraints; (2) urban traffic congestion and its economic cost; (3) cash-on-delivery dependency and payment friction; (4) consumer trust and service-quality gaps; (5) precarious gig-economy labor conditions; (6) reverse logistics and product-return burdens; (7) nascent technology-enabled innovation (micro-warehousing, parcel lockers, route optimization); and (8) a persistent rural–urban delivery divide that constrains market expansion beyond Dhaka. This study is an important step towards synthesizing two decades of disjointed academic, industry and labor-based research on the last-mile delivery system in Bangladesh, and is a research blueprint for tackling the most significant empirical challenges facing the sector.