Integrating express package delivery service with offline mobile sales: a new potential solution to sustainable last-mile logistics in rural China
Shanhua Wu, Qian Yang, Zhongzhen Yang
Abstract
Focusing on bottleneck of express package delivery in rural regions, this study proposes a new potential solution, namely, Collaboration of Delivery and Sale (CDS), which integrates the express package delivery with the offline mobile sales. In order to figure out how to implement the CDS mode, the demand for offline mobile shopping is predicted based on the fitted probability distribution of customers’ arrival time, and on this basis, the vehicle routing optimisation model is developed with the objective of maximising profit of CDS service providers. The methodology is applied in three rural towns with different sizes in China. The case-study result demonstrates that adopting the CDS mode is able to greatly improve the profit of CDS service providers, and thus to resolve the problem of high delivery cost in rural regions with sparse delivery demand, and to facilitate the sustainable development of express package delivery service in remote rural regions.