66% Finns want all mails delivered in morning: Survey

About 66 per cent of Finns would prefer to receive newspapers, magazines, letters, and other postal items usually delivered in the daytime when they receive the early-morning delivery of newspapers, said Posti quoting the results of a survey conducted by IRO Research.

The main reason for the single-bundle delivery is the current environment and the drastic decline in mail volumes.

Currently, there are two different weekday mail deliveries in cities and population centres: the early-morning newspaper delivery and Posti’s daytime delivery, which includes magazines, letters and advertisements, in addition to newspapers.

For a long time, the media sector has demanded that these two deliveries be combined to cut delivery costs.

The Finnish Media Federation proposed before the last parliamentary elections that the current separate deliveries should be combined.

Posti, the postal and logistic services operator of the country assigned IRO Research in July to conduct a survey to find out how Finns feel about combining the deliveries.

The survey revealed that 66% of citizens thought of shifting the delivery of daytime mail to early in the morning positively or fairly positively.

About 13% of the survey respondents viewed the proposal negatively. Roughly one-fifth of the respondents did not have any opinion on the matter. About 65% of women and 68% of men were in favour of combining the deliveries. The percentage of proponents was highest (74%) in the households that subscribe to a newspaper.

According to Yrjö Eskola, head of Posti’s Postal Services business group, the survey shows that mail recipients in cities and population centres are already used to receiving mail in the morning delivery.

Other companies have been delivering letters in the early morning in cities and population centres for four years. Posti has also delivered newspapers to apartment buildings for decades.

“The coronavirus pandemic combined with digitalisation has markedly reduced the mail delivery volume. The number of letters fell by 24% from April to June. With this downward trend, there will simply not be enough mail for two separate delivery networks,” said Eskola.

Data for the survey was collected online by IRO Research Oy’s national consumer panel on 29 June 29 to 6 July. The survey interviewed one thousand citizens. Its statistical margin of error is approximately +3.2 percentage points at most.