Shaping the E-Commerce Logistics Strategy: A Decision Framework

e-commerce is expected to radically change customers' shopping experiences. Market figures show that even though e-commerce has already taken off, the path to realizing its full potential is still long. In the physical goods segments, the strategic importance of logistics - both as a cost driver and as a service enabler - has been recognised by the majority of companies, but it remains unclear how to adapt the “logistics strategy” to possible forms of the “logistics problem”. This issue is even more important for those Dotcoms that need to design their logistics strategies from scratch. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between logistics strategies and logistics problems in the e-commerce of physical goods in order to present a general normative model and draw some key managerial implications so as to help B2C merchants design their logistics strategies. In order to accomplish this task, the combination of a literature review and a multiple case-study approach was used. In particular, 28 case studies of leading B2C e-commerce merchants in Italy - with various business models - in the main online industries that sell products were conducted in order to analyse the relationship between the features of the logistics problem and the logistics strategy adopted.

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