Designing sharing logistics as a disruptive innovation in city logistics

Abstract

Today, companies recognize that the opportunities derived from the on-demand economy are becoming too big to miss. Like all major disruptions, on-demand economy start-ups are challenging industry incumbents with new business models and new ways of engaging customers. Existing companies need to embrace the on-demand economy and transform their service and delivery systems to meet consumer demand. The largest 750 cities in the world are responsible for more than 57% of the global gross domestic product (GDP) and this share is expected to increase to 61% by 2030. At the same time, in today's increasingly global and interconnected world, the share of e-commerce of total global retail sales is also expected to continue to increase, from 7.4% in 2015 to 15.5% in 2021. Furthermore, consumers have higher service expectations than ever before. E-tailers are stimulating and exploiting these service expectations by offering fast delivery options as a means to compete. The population growth and urbanization, the explosion of e-commerce, and the proliferation of fast delivery options, require innovative solutions and business models to ensure cost-effective, but also environmentally and socially friendly, transportation of goods. Within the logistics industry the sharing economy could be a disruptive development that could ideally render a major contribution in reducing the CO2 intensity of its operations . Sharing unused and/or underutilized resources, can unlock new efficiencies in the logistics value chain in an industry where efficiency is the name of the game. This paper addresses three practical sharing initiatives in the field of city logistics, shows the potential of sharing logistics in the domain of city logistics, and contains a description of a methodology how sharing concepts can be designed.