The shift to online retailing over the last five years finally caught up to and overran U.S.-wide delivery capacity during last year's holiday season. According to Forrester Research, online retail sales will grow by an additional 60 percent over the next five years. This kind of sea change has stretched the ability of physical networks to keep up and the shortage of drivers had further exacerbated this situation. Instead, technology has become more important to meeting retailers' holiday delivery challenges by helping to improve the productivity of existing resources and offer a greater array of delivery services being demanded by consumers.

Whole Foods Market moves into the fast-growing same-day grocery-delivery space with the news that it is partnering with one-hour grocery delivery start-up Instacart to have products delivered to customers' homes in as little as one hour. Customers will soon also have the option to place orders via Instacart and pick up their order at a local Whole Foods store.

With companies like Amazon.com and Google advancing plans to use small unmanned aerial vehicles for commercial purposes, pressure is mounting on the Federal Aviation Administration to quickly release rules governing private drone use.

Like Walmart, Amazon and a handful of other retailers, Target is realizing the potential value in offering same-day delivery.

Same-day delivery of items ordered online or from stores is an irresistible idea. Now if retailers could only figure out how to make it work.

Same-day service: It's the ultimate goal of e-commerce retailers - and the ultimate desire of consumers. But is it really feasible?