Is Quick Commerce Pricing Strategy Sustainable ? A Qualitative Exploration of a Way Forward for Last-Mile Delivery

<title>Abstract</title> <p>Q-commerce platforms compete on ultra-fast delivery, often employing aggressive pricing strategies such as subsidised delivery fees to drive volume. While the underlying logic assumes that scale will eventually amortise last-mile costs, these strategies frequently fail to recover marginal costs under strict service-level agreements (SLAs), threatening long-term financial viability. Beyond financial fragility, these models generate significant environmental and social externalities. This study adopts a qualitative, interview-based approach with 32 supply chain and logistics professionals to evaluate the sustainability of q-commerce pricing through the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) lens. The findings reveal that current pricing structures encourages operational fragmentation, eroding batching efficiency and intensifying workforce stress. Qualitative findings are corroborated through quantization of the coded interview data and a stylized unit-economics and emissions analysis, which together indicate that per-order delivery cost and distance decline sharply as batching depth increases, while ultra-fast SLAs render such batching infeasible. We identify demand shaping using differentiated pricing as a critical pathway toward a sustainable last-mile ecosystem.</p>