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A Workload-Balancing Order Dispatch Scheme for O2O Food Delivery with Order Splitting Choice

Authors :
Zhou Yulin
Zhang Lignzhen
Ke Wang
Source :
Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research; Volume 17; Issue 1; Pages: 295-312
Publication Year :
2022
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2022.

Abstract

Online-to-offline (O2O) food delivery service refers to an emerging modern business model that enables customers to order foods from local restaurants via an online platform, and then receive and enjoy them offline after the delivery, offered by couriers. Such service, discussed in this article, specifies that a customer can order from multiple restaurants in a single order and choose for them to be delivered together or separately, whereas the commonly discussed mode only permits placing an order in one restaurant at once. In this service, one crucial issue is how to dispatch these orders to couriers for offline delivery. For this, we propose a new three-stage order dispatch scheme, namely, pseudo-assign first, re-route second, and courier selection last, aiming to deliver the orders in time and balance the couriers’ workload. Due to the dynamism and uncertainty inherently involved in this issue, we also take responsiveness to future demands and robustness into consideration when making the dispatch. Compared with existing approaches, the new one significantly balances the couriers’ workload and, meanwhile, keeps good performance in delay rate, making the decisions more practical. Furthermore, this study analyzes the influence of customers’ preference for order splitting and number of couriers on the efficiency of the distribution system, thereby interesting managerial insights for O2O food delivery are revealed.

Details

ISSN :
07181876
Volume :
17
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....f42d284593fe7980f98ed402a9a9eb84