Demand management for attended home delivery - A literature review

Abstract

Given the continuing e-commerce boom, the design of efficient and effective home delivery services is increasingly relevant. From a logistics perspective, attended home delivery, which requires the customer to be present when the purchased goods are delivered, is particularly challenging. To facilitate the delivery, the service provider and the customer typically agree on a specific time window for service. In designing the service offering, service providers face complex trade-offs between customer preferences and profitable service execution. In this paper, we map these trade-offs to different planning levels and demand management levers, and structure and synthesize corresponding literature according to different demand management decisions. Finally, we highlight research gaps and future research directions and discuss the linkage of the different planning levels.