Crowdsourcing the last mile delivery of online orders by exploiting the social networks of retail store customers

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Crowdsourcing the last mile delivery of online orders by exploiting the social networks of retail store customers

Devari, Aashwinikumar / Nikolaev, Alexander G. / He, Qing

Graphical abstract

Highlights•We show potential benefits of crowdsourced, friendship-based last mile delivery.•We survey people’s attitudes and behavior towards package delivery to/by friends.•We simulate friends-reliant delivery in TRANSIMS using real-world data.

AbstractThis paper demonstrates the potential benefits of crowdsourcing last mile delivery by exploiting a social network of the customers. The presented models and analysis are informed by the results of a survey to gauge people’s attitudes toward engaging in social network-reliant package delivery to and by friends or acquaintances. It is found that using friends in a social network to assist in last mile delivery greatly reduces delivery costs and total emissions while ensuring speedy and reliable delivery. The proposed new delivery method also mitigates the privacy concerns and not-at-home syndrome that widely exist in last mile delivery.