Research On EGS-oriented Optimization Of Consumer Logistics

As a new type of E-Business, E-Grocery Shopping is capturing more andmore share of grocery market owing to its excellent service. Even with advan tages of fastness, convenience, time saving, low price and home delivery service, whether EGS is accepted by consumers is mostly determined by its customer value and efficient consumer logistics service provided for customers takinginto consideration groceries' characteristics such as perishability, idiosyncrasy and intensive experienceSo far the literature of E-Grocery Shopping has paid little attention to theresearches relating to the mechanism about customer value creation and the customer-value-based consumer logistics efficiency, and thus lacked systematical study on EGS. We endeavor to fill the void by focusing on the mechanism ofcustomer value creation and the optimization of consumer logistics to enhancethe efficiency of EGS system in this dissertation.This research begins with the transformation of traditional consumer logistics in the environment of EGS, backgrounded by the shift of relationship between E-Grocers and their customers from opposition to cooperation. From value creation perspective, Customer value creation model is introduced to analyze how EGS creates customer value by using online survey and in-depth case study. From efficiency perspective, however, store fulfillment is vulnerable to congestion when pickers of online orders get in the way of traditional shoppers. We propose an M/M/1 queuing model for efficient allocation of online grocery orders. And computing experiment is conducted to solve the model and sensitivity analysis to show the impact of delivery budget and overall utilization on store congestion.The home delivery problems with time windows and wider windows ince-ntives respectively are analyzed by using incentives; moreover, the linear programming models are constructed. Home delivery poses an enormous logistical challenge because of the unpredictability of demand coupled with strict delivery windows and low profit margin groceries. We examine the use of incentives to influence consumer behavior to reduce delivery costs. We propose optimization models for two forms of incentives and demonstrate their value and impact through simulation studies.Consequently we found that a well-functioning customer-value -creating mec-hanism based on EGS models should be centered on web strategey, and su pported by consumer logistics technology and strategic cooperation between E-Gr-ocers and their customers.The traffic congestion can be solved efficiently by minimizing customer waiting time in store with the constraint of service capability. When customer demands exceed some capability, the demand should be diverted to a dedicated center to fulfill.The use of incentive schemes can substantially reduce delivery costs and thus enhance profits.·Incorporating intelligence into incentive schemes enhances their performance.·Incentive schemes may substantially reduce the number of walkaways.·It is sufficient to provide incentives to only a few delivery windows≤3 hours.·The more time slots are considered for incentives, the more important it becomes to use more sophisticated incentive schemes.·It is easier to develop incentive schemes that encourage customers to accept wider delivery windows, rather than those that encourage customers to select specific time slots.·The use of incentives can be critical even in the early stages of building a delivery schedule.All findings in this research can not only give a profound understanding about EGS system, but also be helpful for E-Grocers to investigate the mechanism of customer value creation and learn the significance from the optimization of consumer logistics to advance the overall operation efficiency. At the sa -me time, this dissertation can provide a far-reaching impact on other researchers for continuous studies.