Sharing Economy for Cost Reduction and Efficiency Increase: The Case of Sharing E-Commerce Logistics

In the real business environment, due to unpredictable market demand or high prediction difficulty and low prediction accuracy, there will be inevitably operational loss in the field of e-commerce logistics caused by undersupply or oversupply of express service capabilities. At present, China is deepening the supply-side structural reforms. Confronted with the growing demand for e-commerce logistics express delivery, especially the urgent demand for tackling orders piling up to 1 billion pieces during the recent “Double 11” shopping carnival, it is very important and practical for us to study how to make scientific decisions on the supply side in the field of e-commerce express delivery. Therefore, in this paper, we design a sharing logistics cooperation mechanism considering both the undersupply and oversupply of express delivery service capabilities under stochastic demand. By comparing the earnings data of several listed express companies, we analyze four types of optimization strategies: the order flow proportion revenue sharing strategy (RE-OFP), the combined factors revenue sharing strategy (RE-RSF), the order flow proportion risk sharing strategy (RS-OFP), and the combined factors risk sharing strategy (RS-RSF). The research results demonstrate that the four optimization strategies of RE-OFP, RE-RSF, RS-OFP, and RS-RSF could achieve Pareto improvements in the operational performance of e-commerce express service. The performance of four revenue sharing and risk sharing strategies varies with different revenue sharing or risk sharing factors. Under some certain combined factors, the revenue sharing contract could help realize the supply chain coordination of the sharing logistics service. The sharing logistics cooperation mechanism based on equity investment proposed hereafter provides a feasible solution to solve the problems of high empty driving rate and operational cost of e-commerce express delivery service in urban areas.