Analyzing the delivery determination problem of new retail stores considering crowdsourcing under the background of blockchain

Abstract

The parcel delivery industry is experiencing rapid growth due to the rise of new retail stores. However, the traditional self-operated delivery model often leads to idle and wasteful distribution resources due to uneven temporal and spatial distribution of delivery orders. In this study, we propose a delivery system that combines crowdsourcing and self-operated delivery for new retail stores using blockchain technology to optimize the delivery algorithm. Our proposed system solves the problem of wasted resources by introducing crowdsourcing delivery and completes the distribution task allocation on a blockchain platform to protect customer privacy and quantify the performance of crowdsourcing couriers. We present a mixed-integer nonlinear programming formulation for the 2-Echelon Winning Determination Problem, in which the delivery decision is based on the lowest total cost. The cost of crowdsourcing delivery is a dynamic cost comprising of crowdsourcing courier service errors and bid prices recorded on the tamper-evident blockchain system. We also analyzed the impact of different crowdsourcing bidding prices on the choice of delivery method and total cost. Synthetic experiments show that our proposed hybrid delivery model ensures high-quality and efficient delivery of new retail stores while saving delivery costs.