第三方物流服务对客户物流成本影响的实证研究

供应链物流服务对于提升客户企业的竞争力,提高经营绩效具有重要的影响,特别是中国的企业,如何通过第三方良好的物流服务,强化供应链物流成本管理是当今企业在发展过程中的重大课题。本文在对以往物流客户服务管理进行理论回顾和归纳的基础上,针对中国企业的背景,利用多元回归分析探索了各种第三方物流服务影响因子对委托客户企业供应链物流成本管理绩效的影响,提出物流服务内容上的增值程度和物流服务水准上的贡献程度对于委托客户企业实现良好的供应链物流成本具有较高的影响,从而揭示了当今中国第三方物流如何从效率和效能两个方面入手提供良好的客户物流服务。     

Consumer perceptions to support IoT based smart parcel locker logistics in China

In recent years, the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) based smart parcel lockers has developed very rapidly in Asia due to the wider applications from retailers, e-commerce companies, logistics companies, and consumers. The revolution of smart technologies has transformed the traditional way of last-mile delivery from logistics outlets to IoT-based parcel lockers due to the flexibility, convenience, and 24/7 accessibility. However, there are still many obstacles affecting the transformation of last-mile delivery especially in consumers perceptions towards the smart technologies. Therefore, in this study, we performed research based on the theory of service quality and customer satisfaction in the adoption of relevant technologies. This article divides the smart parcel lockers' service quality into five dimensions: service price, service reliability, convenience, fault handling capability, and service diversity. In this study, 272 valid questionnaires were collected from China to investigate consumer satisfaction with the smart parcel locker services. Statistical analysis, including the reliability and validity, was performed, followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The correlation between variables and the degree of influence on customer satisfaction and regression analysis was also undertaken in this study. The results revealed that the service price does not positively affect consumer satisfaction, and the other four underlying factors have a positive effect on consumer satisfaction. This research has significant impacts by determining the parcel lockers' core factors so as to foster the further development of last-mile services in the future.     

Everything Old is New Again: The Age of Consumer-Centric Supply Chain Management

Over the past several decades, the disciplines of marketing and logistics grew apart from their common historical origins as marketing became more behavioral and more quantitative, while logistics leaned toward a more operational orientation. We argue in this editorial that social and technological changes in the past 20 years, coupled with the effects of the COVID pandemic, have created the conditions for the two disciplines to reconnect. We propose that scholars and practitioners consider a consumer-centric approach to supply chain management. Such an approach advocates that the entire supply chain should focus on consumer experience rather than mere customer service and that experiences might include issues such as last-mile delivery, supply chain visibility, and consumer values. We also introduce the papers appearing in this issue of the journal.     

Green cooperation in last-mile logistics and consumer loyalty: An empirical analysis of a theoretical framework

Based on the contingency, transaction, and trust theories, this paper explored how the green cooperation between supplier and customer in last-mile logistics contributes to consumers’ sustainable consumption behaviors and trust and transaction cost's contingency role. We collected survey data from 453 users of green shopping platforms in South Korea (e.g., Homepick and Smart Locker) and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling. The results suggest that green cooperation with companies positively affects consumers’ sustainable consumption behaviors and trust, and transaction costs negatively moderate such relationships. In addition, customer trust positively affects sustainable consumption behavior and loyalty. We also found that improved sustainable consumption behavior can form loyalty, but transaction cost decreases its positive impact. This paper evaluates the last-mile delivery through green cooperation and enriches the literature on contingency, transaction cost, and trust theories.     

论物流与市场营销的关系

物流与市场营销之间存在密切的内在联系,即物流对市场营销的影响和市场营销对物流的影响,具体表现在实现产品价值、顾客服务、实现顾客满意度、维系顾客忠诚度等方面。做好物流管理能够有效地促进营销战略地实施。成功的市场营销战略有利于促进物流管理工作,降低企业的物流成本。     

Metaheuristics in Logistics and Supply Chain Management

The modeling of logistics systems is performed to seek the best possible system configuration to minimize costs or maximize operational performance, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations. Classically, analytic system analysis of this type has been performed using optimization, simulation, or heuristics. However, in the past two decades, a newer class of techniques, metaheuristics, has emerged as a capable method for quickly providing near‐optimal solutions for problems that exact optimization cannot solve. This article outlines recent advances in metaheuristics development, and considers the ability of these advanced techniques to resolve various logistics and supply chain problem types. Specifically, the article discusses the ant colony optimization, genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, and tabu search metaheuristics. The capabilities of these metaheuristic techniques to examine supply chain risk and disruptions, intermodal operations, customer service trade‐offs, backhaul strategies, and simultaneous facility location and vehicle route problems are proposed. The article concludes by describing how faculty can bring these techniques into the classroom to ensure their students enter the logistics and supply chain field with a current and relevant understanding of the state of the art in supply chain design techniques.     

基于供应链视角的物流客户服务绩效评价指标体系设计

随着制造和服务的全球化,企业更加关注各种因素对其所处供应链的影响。物流客户服务不仅会对其客户企业产生影响．而且会对客户企业所处供应链产生全方位的影响。因此,本文提出从供应链视角研究物流客户服务绩效评价问题,并用德尔菲法和模糊层次分析法构建了从供应链视角评价物流客户服务绩效的指标体系,得出了时间比成本和质量指标影响作用更大的结论。     

The effect of customer service on retailers’ shareholder wealth: The role of availability and reputation cues

Retailer customer service has been shown to lead to increases in consumer attraction and retention, but what is less apparent is whether shareholders are fully rewarded for retailers’ customer service efforts. Results from an event study on 48 retailer announcements of customer service strategies indicate that customer service increases retailer market values by 1.09 percent on average. The magnitude of this abnormal return suggests that customer service is one of the more effective ways for firms to create shareholder wealth. Further, analysis of the abnormal returns suggests that the shareholder value created by the retailer's customer service is affected by the heuristics and cues used to judge the likelihood of service delivery. Consistent with the availability heuristic, we find that services that are difficult to bring to mind and non-vivid services create significantly less shareholder value. Results further show that the retailer's reputation can also significantly inhibit the customer service's shareholder wealth creation.     

第三方物流产品设计与营销策略

第三方物流企业为客户企业提供物流服务其实质是一种产品即服务产品。不同的第三方物流产品组合满足不同客户个性化、差异化的物流需求。第三方物流企业通过分析客户企业的物流需求来设计符合客户需要的第三方物流产品组合,提供专业性的物流服务,并进行有效的服务营销和关系营销来获取竞争优势。     

第三方物流发展原因及价值分析

第三方物流提供了所有的物流活动。他们在第一方(供应商或生产商)和第二方(买方或顾客)之间扮演着桥梁或设施供应商的角色。第三方物流提供商的基本目标是降低供应商的整体物流成本,提高顾客服务水平。成本降低和对更好更便宜的服务的需求是增长背后的动力。     

MEASURING AND MANAGING THE LEARNING REQUIREMENTS OF ROUTE REOPTIMIZATION ON DELIVERY VEHICLE DRIVERS

Outbound logistical systems that are designed with the flexibility to perform daily reoptimization of delivery routes are often touted as the systems of choice in dealing with randomly fluctuating (stochastic) customer demands. However, a potential drawback with such systems is that the day‐to‐day changes in the delivery routes force each driver to traverse routes that extend beyond the region required if customer demands remained stable. That is, the efficient completion of deliveries under route reoptimization imposes an additional requirement on drivers to learn these routes. Quantification and analysis of this additional learning requirement, along with some of the associated human resource management implications, comprise the paper's primary focus. A key contribution of the research is that the analysis accounts for the cost‐effectiveness of a vehicle routing tactic that might be used to reduce the learning burden.     

An approach to prioritize customer-based,cost-effective service enhancements

Service firms routinely enhance their offerings to satisfy and retain current customers and to attract new customers. We show theoretically that service improvements can be prioritized by simultaneously taking into account the likely incremental revenue (through increased customer value) and the incremental cost of making the improvement. The customer values obtained from a sample of respondents, and cost estimates obtained from managers of the service providing organization are combined to prioritize improvements using a ‘bang for the buck’ (i.e. value/cost) rule. Such a prioritization would be helpful to come up with a ‘short list’ of service improvements. The items on the short list can be evaluated in detail for their ‘Return on Quality’. The approach for prioritization is illustrated in the context of improving passenger train service between a pair of cities in India. An adaptive self-explicated approach is used for obtaining customer values and cost estimates. The customer values so elicited display substantial cross-validity.     

Establishing Logistics Service Strategies That Increase Sales

While the linkage between logistics performance and firm performance has received attention in the literature, typically firm performance is measured as customer satisfaction and customer loyalty rather than share of business or other measures that translate into a financial benefit. Thus logistics executives continue to be judged primarily on cost and asset reductions. Only one study has documented how logistics performance affects customer satisfaction and the percentage of business allocated to the suppliers as well as the differences in outcomes between firms identified as primary and secondary suppliers (Leuschner et al. 2012 ). In this research, we use samples in the motion picture and video production industry, and the plastic materials and resins industry to investigate the impact of the Marketing Mix on customer satisfaction and share of business. Our results differ from Leuschner et al. ( 2012 ) regarding the impact of product, price, and promotion on customer satisfaction, but we confirm the impact of logistics performance on customer satisfaction and the relationship between customer satisfaction and share of business for primary and secondary suppliers combined. Finally, we provide a framework to identify logistics service strategies based on a customer's current profitability, potential growth, and the share of a customer's purchases obtained.     

When Are Deliveries Profitable?

The paper aims to optimize the final part of a firm’s value chain with regard to attended last-mile deliveries. It is assumed that to be profitable, e-commerce businesses need to maximize the overall value of fulfilled orders (rather than their number), while also limiting costs of delivery. To do so, it is essential to decide which delivery requests to accept and which time windows to offer to which consumers. This is especially relevant for attended deliveries, as delivery fees usually cannot fully compensate costs of delivery given tight delivery time windows. The literature review shows that existing order acceptance techniques often ignore either the order value or the expected costs of delivery. The paper presents an iterative solution approach: after calculating an approximate transport capacity based on forecasted expected delivery requests and a cost-minimizing routing, actual delivery requests are accepted or rejected aiming to maximize the overall value of orders given the computed transport capacity. With the final set of accepted requests, the routing solution is updated to minimize costs of delivery. The presented solution approach combines well-known methods from revenue management and time-dependent vehicle routing. In a computational study for a German metropolitan area, the potential and the limits of value-based demand fulfillment as well as its sensitivity regarding forecast accuracy and demand composition are investigated.     

Logistics service capabilities and firm performance of international distribution center operators

This study empirically evaluated the crucial logistics service capabilities and firm performance of international distribution center operators in Taiwan. Three critical logistics service capabilities were identified based on factor analysis: (a) innovation capability, (b) customer response capability, and (c) flexible operation capability. Cluster analysis was subsequently used and based on their mean scores in the three logistics capability dimensions, respondents' firms were assigned to one of three groups, namely: customer response and flexible operation capabilities-oriented firms, customer response and innovation capabilities-oriented firms, and customer response capability-oriented firms. Findings indicated that customer response and innovation capabilities-oriented firms had the best firm performance, followed by customer response and flexible operation capabilities-oriented firms and customer response capability-oriented firms.     

大规模定制模式下基于顾客需求的物流服务商选择研究

以大规模定制(MC)为背景,根据企业顾客的服务需求,提出了一个基于质量功能展开(Quality Function Deployment,QFD)和TOPSIS(综合距离评价)算法相结合选择物流服务商的新方法。首先依据QFD的方法,对基于顾客需求的物流服务商进行了详细分析,然后运用TOPSIS算法,综合考虑几项指标,从候选物流供应商中选择满足顾客需求的"理想物流服务商"。最后,通过举例验证思路的科学性和合理性。     

Understanding consumers’ behavior to adopt self-service parcel services for last-mile delivery

Self-service parcel delivery service has been favored by E-commerce retailers as an effective solution to the “last-mile” delivery, and consumers' adoption behavior is the key point to apply this emerging technology. The aim of the present study is to empirically test the influence of psychological factors on online consumers’ behavioral intention to adopt it. An extended UTAUT model is developed and 525 structured questionnaires were collected. Empirical results demonstrate that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions are positive determinants, while perceived risk was negatively factor to behavioral intention. The difference in the behavioral intention among demographic groups was examined as it might provide an opportunity for developing a new strategy to promote the application of self-service parcel delivery service for last-mile delivery.     

Best–Worst Scaling Approach to Predict Customer Choice for 3PL Services

This study describes a simple, theoretically based methodology to analyze the nature of customer demand for third‐party logistics provider service components. The method overcomes limitations in prior studies and enables us to examine the relative importance of product and service attributes as they pertain to the choice of third‐party logistics providers. Two distinct types of customers populate our data: those professing operational attributes and those seeking relational attributes. The theoretical and practical implications are that improved supply chain models can be developed when separate demand structures are taken into account.     

Making customer relationship decisions: Analytics v rules of thumb

This article explores how customer management decisions are made in the leading Nordic retail banks and whether these decisions are driven by mainstream analytical approaches to customer lifetime value available through the banks' CRM systems, or by rule of thumb heuristics. The results indicate that the use of managerial heuristics is surprisingly widespread and, counter-intuitively, that rule of thumb heuristic-based decision making frequently outweighs measures such as customer lifetime value with regard to customer management decisions. The implications are considerable because if successful banks are making widespread use of heuristics, managers and academics would benefit from understanding the conditions under which heuristic decision making can be more successful than an analytic approach. This understanding, in turn, may highlight a limitation of CRM systems and point to a more flexible approach to customer management decisions in which experience-based managerial heuristics modify data from formal CRM systems.     

我国通信业客户忠诚驱动因素研究

客户忠诚指客户行为的持续性,它对确立企业的核心竞争力具有重要影响。文章认为,客户忠诚是内外部环境因素共同作用的结果。而通讯服务质量、信任、转网成本、员工忠诚是影响通讯业客户忠诚的重要因素。其中,良好的通讯服务质量是维系客户忠诚的保障;信任是客户再购买行为产生的前提;转网成本对通讯业客户忠诚有着不可忽视的影响;员工忠诚有助于客户忠诚的建立。我国通讯运营商要建立客户忠诚,必须以客户导向的营销理念作为企业经营管理的主导思想;加强技术创新,为客户提供全方位的优质服务;与客户之间建立相互信任的合作关系,为长远合作奠定基础;提高转网成本和员工忠诚度,为建立客户忠诚打下坚实的内部基础。