Postal Traffic in Portugal: Applying Time Series Modeling

The postal sector is adapting to the Internet technology (IT) revolution. Short message service (SMS) or email competes with correspondences (e-substitution). On the other hand, the purchase of physical products over the Internet (e-commerce) affects positively the volume of parcels delivered, a phenomenon expected to grow, spurred in part by digital single market goals. Because parcel growth is an e-commerce phenomenon, fixed broadband penetration appears more correlated with postal traffic than gross domestic product (GDP) (EGIDE et al. 2015).