Abstract
Customer involvement is regarded as the new way to increase last-mile efficiency. Improved delivery designs call for customer involvement although it is not clear how customers can be involved and what the consequences are for organizations and customers involved in the lastmile. While literature describes several roles for customers in service delivery, these roles havenot been considered in the last-mile context, and their implications for performance andcontrol over the last-mile are unknown. In this thesis, important customer roles are identified while both the organizational and customer perspectives for the effects of involvement in these roles are examined. By performing interviews with a broad range of experts on the last-mile, itis shown that customer involvement is possible in a multitude of roles and that these roles canlead to increased performance and control. By involving customers, the last-mile can becomemore customer-centered while customer satisfaction, efficiency, and control over the processcan be increased concurrently.