Economic Analysis Of "The Last Mile" In E-commerce Logistics System Based On The Perspective Of Time And Space

E-Commerce has been developing dramatically in China contemporarily,and China has exceeded the US to become the largest E-Retail market in the world with largest volume of delivery parcel globally.The prosperity of E-Commerce in China has been benefited a lot from the low logistics cost derived from low labor cost.As the development of E-Commerce express service,it appears a higher requirement of logistics companies to deliver parcels more customer-friendly and efficiently.However,the labor cost advantage of "the last mile" has been diminishing as the rise of labor cost,thus the key to improve express service and maintain continuing development of E-Commerce is to adjust the way of delivery in terms of "the last mile".The main ways of delivering parcels within "the last mile" in China are couriers'door-to-door delivery service,temporary self-pick stall and directly-operated delivery branch,assisted by other methods like third-party professional express service under socialized delivery methods,intelligent self-pick cabinet and collaboration with communities.In the context that "the last mile" of E-Commerce logistics has been constraining the development of E-Commerce and logistics gradually,this paper induced and summarized the results of previous research.Firstly,from the perspective of time-space economies,"the last mile" of E-Commerce has been defined as the conversion efficiency of the distance of time and space by the terminal distribution service of E-Commerce logistic system.Secondly,this paper analyzed the current supply and demand situation of E-Commerce delivery in China,and the delivery methods of "the last mile" of E-Commerce logistics industry in urban and rural,domestic,overseas and Taiwanese areas,and analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of contemporary delivery methods;utilizing PRN analytical framework(product-resource-network economy)to analyze the delivery service of "the last mile'',and stating the features of network economy by using time-space conversion to achieve economies of scale,economies of scope and time-space increment,while using customized service to state the features of-product.Thirdly,from the perspective of delivery companies and platform enterprises,this paper analyzed the choice of delivery methods regarding to product,resource and network economy,and ranked them.By analyzing consumers' choices of the six delivery methods from the perspective of themselves,it showed that third-party professional express service under socialized delivery methods,intelligent self-pick cabinet,couriers' door-to-door delivery service and collaboration with communities are the main terminal delivery methods in the future.In the end,referring to the terminal delivery methods of JD and T-mall,this paper proposed that the synthetic delivery of all six methods and "the last mile" delivery channels in rural areas are the two important developing aspects in the future.