B2C E-commerce Distribution Models in a Metropolitan Area
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Chang, Yi-Cheng
Abstract
With the significant growth of B2C e-commerce in the recent years, “The Last Mile” is essential for e-commerce to serve customers. To enhance competitive advantages and separate target segments, Firms have paid attention to the characteristics of high customer density in a metropolitan area and hard delivery time windows have been given great attention. B2C e-commerce firms have begun to build distribution systems, and reduce the loading rate with frequently delivery schedules to be creative competitive strategies.
The purpose of this research is to provide the optimal suggestions for B2C e-commerce firms to manage their distribution systems. The previous literature related to B2C e-commerce and logistics, and distribution model design asserts that cost efficiency is considered measurement of the performance associated with facility locations and vehicle routing problems. Additionally, performance also includes factors such as vehicle capacity, maximum route length and customer service time. More specifically, the strategies of B2C e-commerce distribution emphasize the integration the above factors into time-oriented indicators to measure their service quality.
By building a two-stage location-routing problem for B2C e-commerce to provide the scenarios for the required number of facilities and fleet size as well as the facility locations. The first stage is applying the branch and bound method to minimizing the number of facilities and corresponding locations. In the second stage, this research utilizes time-oriented savings method with sequential approach to minimize fleet size in each facility.
This research draws data from a B2C e-commerce enterprise to investigate the optimal combinations among the required number of facilities and fleet size as well as the facility locations. The findings in this research provide the managers a comprehensive and multiple aspects model for developing logistics systems in a metropolitan area. This paper also conduct sensitive analysis to provide different portfolios that managers can take into considerations to further develop their businesses and enhance service quality.
Subjects
B2C電子商務物流
配送模型
區位途程問題
節省法
Type
thesis
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