Customer acceptance mechanisms for home deliveries in metropolitan areas. Ehmke, J. & Campbell, A. European Journal of Operational Research, 233(1):193--207, 2014.
Customer acceptance mechanisms for home deliveries in metropolitan areas [link]Paper  doi  abstract   bibtex   
Efficient and reliable home delivery is crucial for the economic success of online retailers. This is especially challenging for attended home deliveries in metropolitan areas where logistics service providers face congested traffic networks and customers expect deliveries in tight delivery time windows. Our goal is to develop and compare strategies that maximize the profits of a logistics service provider by accepting as many delivery requests as possible, while assessing the potential impact of a request on the service quality of a delivery tour. Several acceptance mechanisms are introduced, differing in the amount of travel time information that is considered in the decision of whether a delivery request can be accommodated or not. A real-world inspired simulation framework is used for comparison of acceptance mechanisms with regard to profits and service quality. Computational experiments utilizing this simulation framework investigate the effectiveness of acceptance mechanisms and help identify when more advanced travel time information may be worth the additional data collection and computational efforts. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
@article{ ehmke_customer_2014,
  title = {Customer acceptance mechanisms for home deliveries in metropolitan areas},
  volume = {233},
  issn = {03772217 (ISSN)},
  url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84885596041&partnerID=40&md5=6974481350e11844f26a82206382a188},
  doi = {10.1016/j.ejor.2013.08.028},
  abstract = {Efficient and reliable home delivery is crucial for the economic success of online retailers. This is especially challenging for attended home deliveries in metropolitan areas where logistics service providers face congested traffic networks and customers expect deliveries in tight delivery time windows. Our goal is to develop and compare strategies that maximize the profits of a logistics service provider by accepting as many delivery requests as possible, while assessing the potential impact of a request on the service quality of a delivery tour. Several acceptance mechanisms are introduced, differing in the amount of travel time information that is considered in the decision of whether a delivery request can be accommodated or not. A real-world inspired simulation framework is used for comparison of acceptance mechanisms with regard to profits and service quality. Computational experiments utilizing this simulation framework investigate the effectiveness of acceptance mechanisms and help identify when more advanced travel time information may be worth the additional data collection and computational efforts. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.},
  language = {English},
  number = {1},
  journal = {European Journal of Operational Research},
  author = {Ehmke, J.F. and Campbell, A.M.},
  year = {2014},
  keywords = {City logistics, Congestion, Electronic commerce, Feasibility check, Home delivery, Logistics, Profitability, Quality of service, Routing, Traffic congestion, Travel time},
  pages = {193--207}
}

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