Warehousing in the e-commerce era: A survey Boysen, Nils; de Koster, René; Weidinger, Felix
European journal of operational research,
09/2019, Volume:
277, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
•We survey the field of warehousing for online retailers.•Suited warehousing systems are described.•The existing literature is surveyed.•Future research challenges are identified.
E-commerce ...retailers face the challenge to assemble large numbers of time-critical picking orders each consisting of just a few order lines with low order quantities. Traditional picker-to-parts warehouses are often ill-suited for these prerequisites, so that automated warehousing systems (e.g., automated picking workstations, robots, and AGV-assisted order picking systems) are applied and organizational adaptions (e.g., mixed-shelves storage, dynamic order processing, and batching, zoning and sorting systems) are made in this branch of industry. This paper is dedicated to these warehousing systems especially suited for e-commerce retailers. We discuss suited systems, survey the relevant literature, and define future research needs.
Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin Foley, Sean; Karlsen, Jonathan R.; Putniņš, Tālis J.
The Review of financial studies,
05/2019, Volume:
32, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Cryptocurrencies are among the largest unregulated markets in the world. We find that approximately one-quarter of bitcoin users are involved in illegal activity. We estimate that around $76 billion ...of illegal activity per year involve bitcoin (46% of bitcoin transactions), which is close to the scale of the U.S. and European markets for illegal drugs. The illegal share of bitcoin activity declines with mainstream interest in bitcoin and with the emergence of more opaque cryptocurrencies. The techniques developed in this paper have applications in cryptocurrency surveillance. Our findings suggest that cryptocurrencies are transforming the black markets by enabling “black e-commerce.”
•E-tailer information sharing with supplier offline entry is studied.•The agency selling e-tailer may withhold demand information to deter offline entry.•The reselling e-tailer may share demand ...information to deter offline entry.•Either agency selling or reselling may lead to a Pareto improvement.•The e-tailer may also encourage supplier offline entry with consumer showrooming.
Nowadays, some suppliers are looking for offline expansion in addition to their preexisting online channels relying on e-tailers. This study focuses on the e-tailer’s demand information sharing strategy with the supplier who may build upon brick-and-mortar stores. Both prevailing agreements between the supplier and the e-tailer are investigated: agency selling and reselling. The equilibrium results are quite different under these two agreements. Specifically, when the supplier’s offline entry cost is very small or large, the e-tailer shares information under agency selling while keeps information private under reselling. When the entry cost is intermediate, channel substitution rate is large and information uncertainty is small, the e-tailer withholds the demand information under agency selling while shares information under reselling to deter the supplier from entering an offline channel. Furthermore, two extensions about consumer behavior in multichannel selection are discussed: showrooming and webrooming. With showrooming or webrooming, the e-tailer’s information sharing decisions qualitatively hold, while with showrooming the drive factor behind may change; that is, withholding information under agency selling and sharing information under reselling may also serve as measures to encourage supplier offline entry when the effect of showrooming is strong.
Many retailers have recently started to offer customers the option to buy online and pick up in store (BOPS). We study the impact of the BOPS initiative on store operations. We build a stylized model ...where a retailer operates both online and offline channels. Customers strategically make channel choices. The BOPS option affects customer choice in two ways: by providing real-time information about inventory availability and by reducing the hassle cost of shopping. We obtain three findings. First, not all products are well suited for in-store pickup; specifically, it may not be profitable to implement BOPS on products that sell well in stores. Second, BOPS enables retailers to reach new customers, but for existing customers, the shift from online fulfillment to store fulfillment may decrease profit margins when the latter is less cost effective. Finally, in a decentralized retail system where store and online channels are managed separately, BOPS revenue can be shared across channels to alleviate incentive conflicts; it is rarely efficient to allocate all the revenue to a single channel.
This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management
.
•Study blockchain-technology-supported platform for diamond authentication and certification.•Explore the values of blockchain-technology-supported platforms.•Uncover that the shopping convenience ...utility offered by traditional retailers is critical.•Show that reducing the laser marking cost is beneficial to all parties.
The blockchain technology is very useful in many industries. One current application is on diamond authentication and certification, which is important in many luxury supply chains. In this paper, we explore different consumer utility driven operations models and highlight the values of blockchain technology supported (BTS) platforms for diamond authentication and certification. We build models and analytically examine both the traditional retail network operations (Model R) and the BTS selling platform (Model PL). We further extend the analysis to study the case with the BTS certification platform (Model BCR). We reveal the conditions under which one model outperforms the others. In particular, we note that the shopping convenience utility offered by the traditional retailers is a critical factor determining which model is the best. Finally, for the BTS platform operations, we study the blockchain-technology-based diamond authentication and certification (BDAC) cost and reveal that reducing it is beneficial to all parties in the luxury supply chain.
•We develop an analytical model to examine how the online platform's selling mode choice interacts with the logistics service strategy.•We identify the optimal combination between the selling mode ...and the logistics service strategy by comparing the four scenarios (i.e., RS, RP, MS and MP scenario).•We examine the equilibrium scenario by considering the strategic interactions between the upstream supplier and the online platform.•Our analysis shows that the results crucially depend on the logistics service's cost performance.
In e-commerce, many online platforms operate as a reseller for some products and serve as a marketplace for others. Under both selling modes, the logistics service can be undertaken by the platform or the supplier. The combination between the selling mode and the logistics service strategy produces four typical scenarios: (a) the platform acts as a reseller and the supplier offers the logistics service, namely, the RS scenario; (b) the platform serves as a reseller and provides the logistics service, namely, the RP scenario; (c) the platform works as a marketplace and the supplier offers the logistics service, namely, the MS scenario; and (d) the platform operates as a marketplace and provides the logistics service, namely, the MP scenario. On this basis, this paper proposes an analytical model to examine how the selling mode choice interacts with the logistics service strategy. We find that the supplier's preference aligns with the improvement of the logistics service level. When the cost performance of the logistics service is high, the RP scenario will generate the highest logistics service level, in which the supplier will gain the highest profit; when the cost performance of the logistics service is low, the MS scenario will generate the highest logistics service level and give the supplier the highest profit. For the platform, as the logistics service's cost performance increases, his preferred scenario will evolve from MP to MS, and then to RP. Further, we examine the equilibrium scenario by considering the interactions between the supplier and the online platform. We find that the MS scenario will be the equilibrium when the logistics service's cost performance is in the medium range; otherwise, RP will become the equilibrium scenario.
Traditionally, online retailers have acted as product resellers. Recently, these retailers have also started to serve as online marketplaces by providing a platform to directly connect sellers with ...buyers. Over and above re‐shaping the traditional e‐commerce market, conventional wisdom suggests that this new format will mitigate the double‐marginalization effect and benefit both the intermediary and suppliers through a revenue sharing scheme. However, we find that upstream competition between suppliers critically moderates this possibility. We also find that the interaction of order‐fulfillment costs and upstream competition intensity moderates the selection of an optimal mode for the intermediary. More specifically, when order‐fulfillment costs are large and when the supplier product offerings are similar (i.e., competition intensity is high), the pure reseller mode is the preferred choice; when order‐fulfillment costs are small and the supplier product offerings are highly differentiated (i.e., low competition intensity), the pure marketplace mode is the preferred choice. Finally, the hybrid mode is preferred when order‐fulfillment costs are moderate and suppliers’ products are somewhat similar (i.e., competition intensity is moderate). The intuition behind these results hinges on the trade‐off between transfer of pricing rights and the responsibility for order fulfillment. Our findings not only complement the emerging online marketplace literature but also provide testable empirical questions concerning the relationship and magnitude of different factors steering the mode choice.
A "supermarket revolution" has occurred in developing countries in the past 2 decades. We focus on three specific issues that reflect the impact of this revolution, particularly in Asia: continuity ...in transformation, innovation in transformation, and unique development strategies. First, the record shows that the rapid growth observed in the early 2000s in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand has continued, and the "newcomers"—India and Vietnam—have grown even faster. Although foreign direct investment has been important, the roles of domestic conglomerates and even state investment have been significant and unique. Second, Asia's supermarket revolution has exhibited unique pathways of retail diffusion and procurement system change. There has been "precocious" penetration of rural towns by rural supermarkets and rural business hubs, emergence of penetration of fresh produce retail that took much longer to initiate in other regions, and emergence of Asian retail developing-country multinational chains. In procurement, a symbiosis between modern retail and the emerging and consolidating modern food processing and logistics sectors has arisen. Third, several approaches are being tried to link small farmers to supermarkets. Some are unique to Asia, for example assembling into a "hub" or "platform" or "park" the various companies and services that link farmers to modern markets. Other approaches relatively new to Asia are found elsewhere, especially in Latin America, including "bringing modern markets to farmers" by establishing collection centers and multipronged collection cum service provision arrangements, and forming market cooperatives and farmer companies to help small farmers access supermarkets.
•The variable remanufacturing cost can be reduced via process innovation.•Remanufacturing in general requires stepwise innovation.•Decentralisation of decision-making may cause overinvestment in ...process innovation.•The overinvestment issue is always beneficial to the environment.
Remanufacturing is an opportunity to deliver all-round sustainability benefits when products are designed accordingly. In this paper, we focus on the link between remanufacturing and the opportunity to lower the variable remanufacturing cost via process innovation. Specifically, we analyse how the opportunity is utilized in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer. Only the manufacturer may undertake process innovation, while remanufacturing as such could be done by either the manufacturer or the retailer. We find that although the traditional manufacturing process accepts incremental improvement, remanufacturing in general requires stepwise innovation; thus, the optimal strategy of managing process innovation in a forward supply chain does not directly apply to manage process innovation for remanufacturing in a closed-loop supply chain. Our analytical results also show that a decentralised supply chain could be more likely to take up remanufacturing than an integrated supply chain, especially when the process innovation cost is sufficiently high. Consequently, inefficiency resulting from decentralisation of decision-making in the closed-loop supply chain may cause not only underinvestment but also overinvestment in process innovation for remanufacturing. Finally, through an extensive numerical analysis, we find that this overinvestment always reduces the environmental impact in terms of the overall production quantity, even if the decision-making process does not explicitly consider any environmental aspect.
Omni-channel retailing is a popular strategy in a new retailing era when digitalization, social media, big data and other emerging technologies (e.g., Artificial Intelligence (AI), virtual reality ...(VR), augmented reality (AR), blockchain, etc.) are transforming the retail business models. Meanwhile, omni-channel related operations impose a challenge on either well-established firms or new setups that they have to make “right” decisions to fit in the new retail environment. This review paper endeavors to reveal the established knowledge behind the omni-channel retailing literature, generate managerial implications for firms, and provides a guideline for future research. We conduct this systematic review by adopting citation network analysis (CNA). The CNA helps identify seven independent and interdependent research domains, which depict (or constitute) a whole picture of “omnichannel management”. The main path analysis reveals that each identified research domain is under study. We also find that the extant literature seldom examines the roles of how new technologies play in the “omnichannel management”. Moreover, the domain of supply chain management and inventory management in the omnichannel environment is absent in this systematic literature review. Therefore, we propose a prescribed framework for “omnichannel management” (PFOM), which contributes to the literature on “omnichannel management” and provides important managerial applications to the retail firms that plan to implement the omnichannel strategy.
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