Commercial and Regulatory Challenges for Postal e-Services in Switzerland

Abstract

Swiss Post has been innovating for years, strengthening its expertise as an actor in the digital world and exploiting the unique selling propositions it owns in the physical world. The emergence of the internet in combination with gradual liberalization has given rise to new customer needs, increased and changing competition as well as new business models in the postal sector. The rationale for Swiss Post’s investment in postal e-services is twofold: First, new ser-vices may enhance the value of traditional services by adding complementary services; second, they may compensate losses due to the progressing substitution of physical letter mail which progresses at a rate of about 2 percent per year. This paper documents digital postal services in Switzerland in the context of the postal regulatory and business environment. The paper wraps up the development of postal e-services in Switzerland, puts it in a commercial and regulatory perspective and provides an outlook to future developments.