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Whilst green distribution alternatives for consumers have the potential to decrease environmental impact from logistics, retailers struggle to provide such alternatives. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of the factors that hinder retailers from offering green distribution alternatives to consumers.

The paper relies on a multiple case-study of three cases, with one retailer constituting each case. Semi-structured interviews with seven respondents and visits to the retailers' checkouts were used for data collection.

The offering of green distribution alternatives is a complex task for retailers, with barriers related to six categories (organisational, financial, retailer-logistic service provider (LSP) market, retailer-consumer market, governmental and technological barriers) obstructing the way forward. A process towards offering green distribution services, including barriers and potential mitigation strategies, is suggested.

The study is limited to a Swedish context, and further research could consider how barriers would manifest themselves in countries with other characteristics.

A framework with barriers and mitigation strategies offers guidance for managers within e-commerce.

The greening of logistics is an important quest towards world-wide sustainability goals, and this paper contributes with an increased understanding of how to decrease environmental impact from e-commerce distribution.

The paper is one of few that takes the consumer side of the greening of logistics into account, thus contributing with valuable perspectives to this scarce body of literature.

This paper takes its starting point in the possibilities consumers have to influence the greening of distribution. It focuses on three key actors who can facilitate consumer influence, namely e-tailers, logistics service providers (LSPs) and the consumers themselves. The purpose is to illuminate consumers' possibilities to influence the greening of distribution by exploring the communication between LSPs, e-tailers and consumers.

Website scans of the 40 largest Swedish e-tailers and ten LSPs were combined with interviews of three e-tailers and three LSPs.

The findings suggest that consumers at present have limited possibilities to influence the greening of distribution. One reason for this is the limited communication between LSPs, e-tailers and consumers. A gap in communication arises because e-tailers determine how to promote distribution alternatives on their websites, while it is the LSPs who develop and offer green distribution services.

This paper provides a first step in our understanding of what is needed in order to facilitate green distribution decisions from e-consumers.

E-tailers can gain an increased understanding of their important role as facilitators of environmentally sound decisions for consumers through their design of websites. This study also highlights the need for LSPs to support e-tailers in this work.

The study contributes to the societal striving towards zero greenhouse gas emission by focussing on decreasing environmental effects by using suitable logistics.

In contrast with previous research into the environmental impact of e-commerce distribution, this study investigates the possibilities consumers have to influence green logistics within e-commerce.

Given the importance of logistics operations in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce and growing interest in the related environmental effects, the purpose of this paper is to offer an up-to-date literature review on the topic of B2C e-commerce environmental sustainability, specifically from a logistics perspective.

The analysis focussed on a set of 56 papers published from 2001 to 2014 in 38 peer-reviewed international journals. The papers were analyzed and categorized according to the main features of the paper, the research method(s) adopted and the themes tackled.

There is a growing interest in sustainability issues. In the last 14 years, the focus has progressively shifted from the mere identification of the wide-ranging environmental effects of e-commerce to the need for a quantitative evaluation of their impact, although much remains to be done in this regard. Some industries, such as books and grocery, have largely been addressed, however, promising sectors in the e-commerce field, such as clothing and consumer electronics, have only been considered to a certain degree. Moreover, despite the emerging role of multichannel strategies, the environmental implications of the related logistics activities have not yet been studied in detail.

B2C e-commerce has grown in popularity, and its environmental implications are currently of key interest. This paper contributes to the understanding of the existing body of knowledge on this topic, presenting an up-to-date classification of articles and highlighting themes for further research activities. From a managerial perspective, this paper helps supply chain managers develop a clear understanding of both the logistics areas with the most impact on environmental sustainability and the KPIs used to quantify the environmental implications of e-commerce logistics operations comprehensively and effectively.

Examines the importance of e‐commerce in the retail economy. The analysis is placed in the broader context of economic and social change and provides a theoretical framework for evaluating the growth of e‐commerce as a major distribution channel. By exploring the results of the recently released “Household Internet survey of Canadian households”, the paper documents the actual shopping behaviour of Internet shoppers from a variety of perspectives. The Canadian experience should provide analysis with a series of benchmarks and trends on which to evaluate the adoption of e‐commerce in other markets.

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the extant research on last-mile logistics (LML) models and consider LML’s diverse roots in city logistics, home delivery and business-to-consumer distribution, and more recent developments within the e-commerce digital supply chain context. The review offers a structured approach to what is currently a disparate and fractured field in logistics.

The systematic literature review examines the interface between e-commerce and LML. Following a protocol-driven methodology, combined with a “snowballing” technique, a total of 47 articles form the basis of the review.

The literature analysis conceptualises the relationship between a broad set of contingency variables and operational characteristics of LML configuration (push-centric, pull-centric, and hybrid system) via a set of structural variables, which are captured in the form of a design framework. The authors propose four future research areas reflecting likely digital supply chain evolutions.

To circumvent subjective selection of articles for inclusion, all papers were assessed independently by two researchers and counterchecked with two independent logistics experts. Resulting classifications inform the development of future LML models.

The design framework of this study provides practitioners insights on key contingency and structural variables and their interrelationships, as well as viable configuration options within given boundary conditions. The reformulated knowledge allows these prescriptive models to inform practitioners in their design of last-mile distribution.

Improved LML performance would have positive societal impacts in terms of service and resource efficiency.

This paper provides the first comprehensive review on LML models in the modern e-commerce context. It synthesises knowledge of LML models and provides insights on current trends and future research directions.

A wide urban–rural income gap exists in China despite the implementation of pro-rural policies. Additionally, with the proliferation of the internet and information technology, the promotion effect of e-commerce on the economy has become apparent. Accordingly, China has been actively encouraging rural households to participate in e-commerce activities. This study aims to examine the effect of e-commerce on the urban–rural income gap.

In the study, linear and panel threshold models were applied to provincial-level panel data from 2002 to 2018.

The results of the linear model show that e-commerce contributes to narrowing the urban–rural income gap. Moreover, the panel threshold model results show that the narrowing effect exists in regions where the e-commerce intensity is at a medium-to-high level and urbanization is at a relatively low level; otherwise, e-commerce has no effect. In addition, in regions with a relatively high level of public expenditure and education, the income-gap-narrowing effect of e-commerce is more than double.

The urban–rural income gap can be reduced by promoting e-commerce and reducing the urban–rural divide in e-commerce use.

To determine how varying levels of e-commerce development affect the urban–rural income gap across regions, the study proposes four key causes of the digital divide in e-commerce: e-commerce intensity, public expenditure level, urbanization level and education level and applies the variables as threshold variables to examine the non-linear effect of e-commerce on the income gap.

The purpose of this paper is to study the problem of a routing problem with uncertain try-on service time (VRPUS) for apparel distribution, and to devise solution strategies coping with the uncertainty by an evolutionary algorithm. VRPUS belongs to the category of practical routing models integrated with uncertain service times. However, in the background of apparel distribution, it has distinct features. The try-on service will improve the customer satisfaction by providing experiences to customers; the return cost is saved; the customer loyalty is improved for experiencing face-to-face try-on services. However, the uncertainty of try-on service time makes the apparel distribution process uncertain and incurs additional risk management cost, such that the logistics companies should optimally make decisions on the choice of the service and the service processes.

This paper devised a mixed-integer programming (MIP) model for the base vehicle routing problem (VRP) and then it is extended to support the solution strategies for uncertain try-on times. A try-on time estimation parameter and a time reservation parameter are used to cope with the uncertain try-on time, and the try-on rejection strategy is applied when the uncertain try-on time is realized at customer and no surplus time can be used for try-on service besides distributing to remainder customers. Due to the computational complexity of VRPUS, an evolutionary algorithm is designed for solving it. These parameters and strategy options are designed for the operational decisions by logistics companies. Finally, a decision support system (DSS) is designed.

Five experimental scenarios are performed to reveal the impacts of parameters and solution strategies coping with uncertain try-on time on the distribution cost, return cost, and the try-on service failure. The tuning methods are designed to assist the decisions by logistics companies.

A new routing problem is addressed for apparel distribution in fashion industry especially in the context of booming apparel e-commerce, which is a VRP with uncertain try-on service time for apparel distribution; three strategies are developed to cope with the try-on time uncertainty. The proposed method is also a theoretical base for designing a practical DSS for logistics companies to provide try-on service to customers.

The main objective of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review (SLR) and structured insight into last mile delivery, ultimately identifying gaps in current knowledge and proposing a framework for future research direction in terms of sustainability in the area.

This paper identifies and synthesizes information from academic journals and examines “Journals and Publishing place,” “Geographic location,” “Year of Publication,” “University and Author Affiliation,” “Themes and Sub-themes,” “Theory,” “Research Design, Methods and Area” and “Industry Involvement.” A collection of online databases from 2005 to 2020 were explored, using the keywords “Last mile delivery,” “Last mile logistics,” “Last mile transportation,” “Last mile fulfillment,” “Last mile operations” and “Last mile distribution” in their title and/or abstract and/or keywords. Accordingly, a total of 281 journal articles were found in this discipline area, and data were derived from a succession of variables.

There has been significant growth in published articles concerning last mile delivery over the last 15 years (2005–2020). An in-depth review of the literature shows five dimensions of the last mile: last mile delivery, transportation, operations, distribution and logistics. Each of these dimensions is interrelated and possess clustered characteristics. For instance, last mile operations, last mile transportation and last mile delivery are operational, whereas last mile distribution is tactical, and last mile logistics possess strategic characteristics. The findings also indicate that even though the sustainability concept can be incorporated into all levels of the last mile, the current literature landscape mainly concentrates on the operational level.

This review is limited to academic sources available from Emerald Insight, Science Direct, Taylor and Francis, Springer, MDPI and IEEE containing the mentioned keywords in the title and/or abstract/or keywords. Furthermore, only papers from high-quality, peer-reviewed journals were evaluated. Other sources such as books and conference papers were not included.

This study dissects last mile delivery to produce a framework that captures and presents its complex characteristics and its interconnectedness with various related components. By analyzing last mile delivery in its entirety, the framework also helps practitioners pinpoint which levels of last mile delivery (operation, tactical or strategic) they can incorporate the concept of sustainability.

The research findings enrich the contemporary literature landscape and future work by providing a conceptual framework that incorporates the “economic,” “environmental” and “social” pillars of sustainability in all dimensions of the last mile delivery.

The purpose of this paper is to apply a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework to evaluate distribution strategies for an e-tailer. An application of MCDM method, the hybrid DANP–VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) model, is used for e-tailers’ distribution strategy evaluation. The choice of distribution strategies under various dimensions is evaluated.

The authors used a hybrid MCDM model to solve the decision-making framework, which combines Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), DEMATEL-based analytic network process and VIKOR method. Data were collected from the experts (e-tail manager, logistics manager, operations manager and distribution center (DC) manager) using two questionnaires, first for the influential relationship among the criteria and dimensions and second for a performance rating of each alternative (distribution strategies) against each criterion.

DANP with VIKOR method prioritizes the distribution strategies in the following order: DC shipment, drop shipment, click and collect, store shipment and click and reserve. Performance gap was calculated based on the VIKOR method to provide distribution strategies to an e-tailer under different situations. The authors infer that in developing country, product characteristics and transportation have a major influence on deciding the distribution strategy.

Decision-making framework will provide e-tail mangers a knowledge-based understanding to select the distribution strategy under the different situations related to the performance, product, e-tailer and external characteristics for smooth order fulfillment process. The insights developed by this research provide a framework for rational decision making in distribution strategy selection in e-business.

This is the first kind of a study which offers a decision framework for e-tail managers on how to choose distribution strategies under different situations which are related to the performance, product, e-tailer and external characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of logistics service quality (LSQ) on consumer satisfaction and loyalty in an omni-channel retail environment.

An empirical, survey-based approach is used to collect data from consumers about experiences with two different omni-channel retail scenarios: buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPS), and buy-in-store-ship-direct (BSSD). Participants responded to questions regarding the LSQ, consumer satisfaction, and consumer loyalty relative to their actual experience in one of these situations.

Results suggest that omni-channel consumers are truly unique, and all three dimensions of LSQ (condition, availability, and timeliness) are distinct in their impact on satisfaction and loyalty. Results suggest that in the BOPS sample, consumer satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between condition and loyalty and fully mediates the relationship between timeliness and loyalty. In the BSSD model, consumer satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between timeliness and consumer loyalty.

This research studies LSQ in two different omni-channel scenarios; additional research is needed to explore other omni-channel scenarios and extend the findings to be more generalizable.

Managers should recognize that for omni-channel consumers, timeliness is the essential driver of satisfaction and loyalty. Retailers need to account for this reality and dedicate substantial resources to meet delivery requirements in a timely manner. Logistics service providers need to emphasize speed and reliability of their delivery processes for omni-channel consumers.

This research is the first attempt at conceptualizing LSQ in an omni-channel supply chain, and testing the impact of LSQ on consumer satisfaction and loyalty.