Getting the most from the post?

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Getting the most from the post? – Consumers’ knowledge of Royal Mail’s products

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As part of its role as the UK’s universal postal service provider, Royal Mail offers consumers a range of postal products designed to meet different needs for delivery speed, security and compensation in the event of loss or damage.

These include:

First Class
Second Class
Recorded Signed For
Special Delivery
Certificates of Posting
These products are used in the majority of consumers’ postal transactions and it is important that consumers know which product is most appropriate, particularly when sending valuable or urgent items. It is easy to assume that these products are familiar and therefore that consumers have a good grasp of their features and appropriate use. The findings from existing research on this issue led us to believe that we needed to test this assumption, particularly because the names of these products do not clearly communicate their features.

The timing of this work was partly driven by recent changes to the regulations that govern these products; as of 1 April 2012 the regulator no longer specifies these names and Royal Mail is now free to use whatever names it deems appropriate.

This report presents four related pieces of consumer research. We wanted to assess how well these products and their features are linked in consumers’ minds. We therefore conducted two omnibus surveys. One survey tested consumers’ awareness of which product they should choose to fulfil a particular posting need. The results of this first survey led us to commission a second, to investigate their knowledge of the features that these products provide. These postal products are commonly sold across a post office counter, so we also report on the relevant findings from two previously-published Consumer Focus mystery shopping exercises conducted in High Street post offices1 and the pilot branches of Post Office Locals.



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