Glossary of terms used for the purporses of the review
Access - The arrangement by which mail users and licensed postal operators can use Royal Mail’s facilities to carry their post for part of its journey. For example, a company might collect bulk mail directly from a utility, sort and transport it to one of Royal Mail’s mail centres, and then contract with Royal Mail to deliver these items over the “final mile”.
Access point - The point at which mail is fed into the Royal Mail network. This can be pillar boxes, post offices, collection from a sender’s premises, for example.
Advertising mail - Mail for marketing and advertising purposes, sent by businesses to consumers. Sometimes called “direct mail”.
Addressed mail - Mail with a named recipient.
Alternative carriers - Postal companies other than Royal Mail.
Application - The mail market can be broken down by application into five categories: transactional mail, advertising mail, publications, social mail and fulfilment.
Bulk mail - A large number of mail items of the same format, posted by a single user, from a single site.
Bypass - The collection, sorting, transportation and delivery of mail using a network other than Royal Mail’s.
Communications market - This includes post, email, internet, broadcasting and telecommunications.
Consumers - Large businesses, SMEs and domestic consumers, both those who send mail and those who receive it.
Cost-reflective pricing - The practice of calculating the price of a service according to the cost of the operations needed to provide that service.
Delivery office - A Royal Mail facility at which mail is sorted into the right sequence for delivering to addresses.
Direct mail - Mail for marketing and advertising purposes, sent by businesses to consumers. This paper uses the term “advertising mail”.
Domestic consumers - Those who send mail for reasons other than their business. This includes letters, cards and packages to family and friends.
Door to door mail - Mail posted in bulk with no named recipients. This is also called unaddressed mail.
Downstream - The delivery of mail to addresses.
Downstream access - The arrangement by which alternative carriers have access to Royal Mail's distribution systems at an inward mail centre.
E-commerce - Trading by the use of electronic media, particularly the internet.
E-fulfilment - The successful delivery of mail containing goods ordered via the internet.
Elasticity - Price elasticities describe the relationship between changes in price for a product and changes in demand for that product. High price elasticities (other things being equal) mean that increasing the price for a product can reduce total revenues because the higher price leads to an offsetting fall in the product’s sales.
End-to-end - A service which comprises all parts of the postal service chain: collection, sorting, transportation upstream and delivery of mail to its final destination.
E-substitution - The effect of a decision by consumers to use electronic alternatives to the postal service.
Ex-ante regulation - Requirements designed to prevent anti-competitive behaviour before it arises.
Ex-post regulation - Regulation designed to resolve cases of anti-competitive behaviour in the course of events.
Final mile - The process of delivering mail from one of Royal Mail’s delivery offices to one of the 28 million addresses in the UK.
First mile - The process of collecting social mail from one of Royal Mail’s pillar boxes or post offices.
Fulfilment - The delivery of mail containing goods ordered by mail order, telephone or the internet.
Letters market - The market which excludes parcels and courier services.
Liberalisation - The process of creating a market in which companies can compete to offer postal services. In the UK, liberalisation has been achieved under the regulatory framework set by the Postal Services Act 2000, and rules laid down by Postcomm.
Licensed area - The area of postal activity for which postal operators must have a license: letters weighing less than 350g and costing less than £1 to post.
Mail centre - Royal Mail facility at which mail is sorted and sent to a delivery office.
Packet - An addressed item of mail enclosing large documents, normally sent in padded or sturdy envelopes.
Postcomm - The regulator of the postal sector.
Price cap regulation - Regulator places a ceiling on the prices that Royal Mail is allowed to charge.
SME - Small and medium-sized enterprises with fewer than 250 employees.
Social mail - Mail sent from non-business consumers to other non-business consumers.
Structural developments - Changes outside the postal market which have an impact on mail volumes. These include the increased use of alternative forms of communication.
Transactional mail - Mail generated by business which is conducting a financial transaction with consumers (such as credit card bills or bank statements).
Unaddressed mail - Mail without a named recipient, such as a leaflet or flyer.
Uniform tariff - A single price for the collection of mail and its conveyance and delivery.
Universal service obligation - Postal products and associated minimum service standards that must be made available to all 28 million addresses in the UK.
Upstream - The collection and sorting of mail, and transportation to one of the Royal Mail’s mail centres.
Zonal pricing - A system of pricing which takes account of the different costs of sending letters or parcels to different parts of the country.
