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Research on the Development of Third Party Logistics under E-commerce (1)
First, the combination of e-commerce and third-party logistics.
Third-party logistics is a logistics specialized operation mode in which logistics services are completed by a third party other than the supply and demand sides of logistics services. The third-party logistics with modern information technology as the link is the foundation of e-commerce. Only by providing goods and services to users quickly and timely can e-commerce really end. This needs to be based on the efficient operation of the logistics system. In the e-commerce environment, shops and banks are virtualized, commercial transactions are informationized, and production enterprises are flexible. Logistics activities have become the only subject of physical supply in the market. E-commerce provides a broad space for the development of third-party logistics. It can be seen that only when the third party logistics is closely integrated with e-commerce can it give full play to its advantages of specialization and high efficiency and improve its overall competitiveness.
Second, the problems in the development of third-party logistics under e-commerce
As a new industry, China's third-party logistics enterprises are in the initial or transformation stage, and there is still a big gap between the overall scale, competitive strength, management level and business philosophy from the advanced third-party logistics service forms.
1. lacks the comprehensive ability of logistics design, development and operation, and the service level is low.
Most of the third-party logistics enterprises in China have a single function, either warehousing, transportation or distribution, and even fewer can provide customers with high added value, lacking the comprehensive ability to provide complete logistics design, development and operation for e-commerce enterprises. Compared with western developed countries, there are still many gaps in service concept, service standard, service content, service marketing and service quality control of Chinese third-party logistics enterprises, which makes them lack competitiveness.
2. Logistics enterprises are not highly informatized.
At present, most of the self-built warehousing and transportation teams of third-party logistics enterprises are small in scale, so they can't invest a lot of manpower and funds in information construction. The informatization construction of large-scale logistics enterprises started late and the degree of informatization is not high. Decentralized logistics units can only meet the needs of modern production and circulation by forming a network, and some logistics operation processes can only be more perfect with the support of e-commerce. However, there are few outlets between the existing freight station and the freight hub, the technical equipment is backward, and the freight hub with modern equipment and its operation system are lacking.
3. Decentralized management, lack of scale effect
Most of the third-party logistics enterprises in China are small and medium-sized enterprises, with simple logistics services, low degree of organization and weak degree of horizontal integration. Most logistics outlets are scattered, which fails to effectively integrate and give full play to scale effect and overall synergy effect. In the logistics system, many specialized assets are owned by different logistics enterprises, and they have not formed a strategic alliance through investment and signing long-term agreements. , so that they can't * * enjoy resources, and can't gather scattered and fragmented logistics elements to form a new whole, so as to play the function that a single logistics element can't play.
4 backward understanding of logistics, lack of professionals
The lack of modern logistics talents has become one of the bottlenecks in the development of logistics industry. Foreign logistics education is very developed, and employees have certain logistics knowledge and practical experience, but our country is still very backward in this respect, and the existing logistics talents are very scarce, with a serious shortage of quantity and low quality.
Third, the countermeasures for the development of third-party logistics under e-commerce
In order to meet the needs of e-commerce development, third-party logistics enterprises should seize the opportunity and seriously formulate their own development countermeasures. In view of the main problems faced by China's third-party logistics enterprises under e-commerce, the following countermeasures are put forward:
1. Continuously improve logistics equipment, innovate logistics services, and improve the service capabilities of third-party logistics enterprises.
Compared with the general distribution and supply system, logistics in e-commerce environment is facing more complicated situations. Some of its business activities are completed online, and services such as commodity procurement and distribution move from virtual to physical. Logistics in e-commerce environment is not only limited to traditional logistics transportation and storage, but also requires it to participate in customer logistics system in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Its business field has widely penetrated into the whole production and operation process such as customer sales plan, inventory management plan and production plan, which requires third-party logistics enterprises to improve their equipment, improve their professional level and expand their business, so as to provide efficient and low-cost services and achieve good economic benefits.
2. Accelerate the process of third-party logistics informatization (www.lunwenda.com Paper Download Network)
Through the logistics information system, the whole logistics distribution system can be managed and dispatched in a unified way. According to the user's ordering requirements, the goods can be tallied in the logistics center and delivered to the consignee, so as to realize the digital management of logistics, ensure the smooth flow of external information, realize the information sharing among employees within the enterprise, greatly improve the service quality, reduce the logistics cost, optimize the inventory allocation, improve the economic and social benefits of the enterprise and improve the customer service level. The construction of logistics information system includes barcode (BC), electronic data interchange (EDI), management information system (MIS), total quality management (TQM), radio frequency technology (FR), geographic information system (GIS), global positioning system (GPS) and so on. It is impossible for all logistics enterprises to have all the above systems at once, but information construction should be included in the enterprise development plan, and it is not allowed if conditions permit.
3. Develop strategic alliances and establish competitive advantages.
Today's market economy is full of competition, but cooperation is inevitable. Therefore, many enterprises are establishing strategic alliances to gain competitive advantages, and so is the development of third-party logistics. On the one hand, it is necessary to carry out vertical alliances, that is, alliances with e-commerce enterprises, and establish a * * * relationship of "complementary advantages and benefit sharing" with them. By establishing the strategic alliance between e-commerce enterprises and third-party logistics enterprises and cultivating long-term cooperative partnership, the logistics cost of e-commerce enterprises can be reduced and the development of logistics enterprises can be promoted. On the other hand, horizontal alliance, that is, alliance with other third-party logistics enterprises, will integrate their unique enterprise resources, not only realize the integration of services, but also enable enterprises to form large-scale operations and reduce operating costs.
4. Step up the training of high-level compound professional logistics talents.
First of all, it is necessary to establish a perfect logistics professional education system in colleges and universities to meet the demand of logistics talents for the development of third-party logistics in China. We should establish an integrated training mode combining production, learning and research, and train senior professionals engaged in logistics theoretical research and practice, so that they can master cutting-edge e-commerce and IT technology on the basis of solid logistics theoretical knowledge and become innovative modern logistics compound talents. Secondly, to develop vocational education of logistics specialty, we should pay attention to the cross-teaching of IT technology, e-commerce and basic logistics theory, adopt various forms and different levels of targeted training, and pay full attention to the on-the-job education of third-party logistics practitioners, so as to continuously deliver high-quality professionals for logistics enterprises in China.
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Research on Integrated Marketing Strategy of Third Party Logistics Based on E-commerce
Abstract: Logistics, as the most special and basic of the "four major streams", needs a long time to gradually improve its process. When conducting e-commerce activities, faced with the rapidly increasing orders through online transactions, many enterprises' original logistics capabilities are often powerless. The use of third-party logistics has gradually become an inevitable choice for enterprises to reduce assets and save logistics costs.
(A) Logistics plays an important role in the rapid development of e-commerce.
Business activities conducted through the use of the Internet are called "e-commerce". Internet has built a virtual trading platform for buyers and sellers. With the rapid development of Internet, e-commerce based on Internet trading platform has also developed rapidly (Wigand &; Benjamin,1995; Hoffman, Novak & chatterjee,1995; Stanfield & Whitten,1999; Swaminathan, Lepkovska-White & Rao, 1999). E-commerce is the product of informationization and networking in the 20th century, and it is a process of commodity trading with the help of modern information technology. E-commerce replaces the storage, transmission, statistics and release of paper information carriers in the traditional transaction process, and the whole process of goods and services transaction and transaction management is paperless, achieving the goals of high efficiency, low cost, real-time, networking and directness. The process of e-commerce includes four basic "flows", namely, information flow, business flow, capital flow and logistics. The realization of e-commerce transaction process needs the coordination of these "four streams" from beginning to end. With the development of information technology and electronic banking, the computerization and networking of the former "third-rate" can be realized through information technology and communication network. As the most special and basic of the four major streams, logistics needs a long time to gradually improve its process. However, without the development of logistics industry, the advantages of e-commerce will be greatly limited. Therefore, the development of e-commerce is inseparable from the development of logistics industry, and e-commerce calls for the emergence of developed logistics industry.
Like finance, research and development, marketing and production management, the function of logistics is also one of the main functions of enterprise organizations. Logistics decision-making has a direct impact on the final performance level of enterprises, mainly through increasing revenue and reducing costs (Innis &; Lalonde,1994; Lynch, 1998). Research shows that in many industries, the input of logistics accounts for about 20% of the total input (Lamber &; Stock,1993; Balu, 1999). In addition, logistics activities will also have a great impact on the income level (ozment &; Chard, 1986). As a physical entity, logistics is an indispensable intermediate link in the process of social reproduction and a bridge and link between production and consumption. As a new form of business activities, e-commerce is extremely important for comprehensively improving the quality of logistics services. The development of information technology, especially the recent e-commerce, has had a great impact on the traditional market structure. McQuivey and others (1998) have boldly predicted that by 2003, more than 40 million families will buy goods online, and online sales will reach108 billion US dollars (it is estimated that its proportion will account for 6% of the total retail sales in the United States); B2B and B2C are the two most important modes in e-commerce, and their proportions in e-commerce are equally important. Comparatively speaking, the development momentum of B2B will be even stronger, and its transaction volume will reach 1 13 trillion US dollars by 2003. After entering the 2 1 century, the sharp decline of Nasdaq in the United States undoubtedly failed to live up to the predictions of McQuivey and others, but despite this, economic practice shows that e-commerce still has strong vitality.
(B) the actual needs of third-party logistics
Peter drucker (1999) believes that "e-commerce will have an all-round impact on economy, market, industrial structure, products and services and their delivery, market segmentation, customer value, consumer behavior, employment and labor market. However, its far-reaching field may be in the social and political fields, thus making the world we live in undergo earth-shaking changes. " E-commerce and the new Internet trading channels generated by e-commerce will have a far-reaching impact on the trading activities of enterprises and how enterprises organize their logistics (Copacion,1997; Brookshier,1999; Karpinski, 1999). The development of e-commerce makes enterprises have to re-examine the role of logistics. Whether it is B2B or B2C, enterprises must understand that goods cannot be delivered through the Internet. An enterprise that begins to implement e-commerce must first become an enterprise that can successfully organize its logistics. Only in this way can we cope with frequent small-scale online orders. In fact, it is a great challenge for any enterprise to deliver the goods to customers' doorstep in time, and those enterprises that have succeeded in e-commerce are undoubtedly those that can do relatively successful in commodity distribution (Hupperta,1999; Foster,1999; Harrington, 2000; Hill, 1999).
In order to better deliver goods to customers, enterprises need to invest in improving their information processing capabilities. Customer satisfaction is directly proportional to the efficiency level of distribution, and customer satisfaction is directly related to the performance level of enterprises (Bienstock et al,1997; Chow et al.,1994; Gully,1996; Ellinger et al., 2000). In B2B e-commerce, many enterprises decide which supplier's products to choose according to the supplier's logistics ability (Gooley, 1996). Therefore, customer satisfaction plays an important role in e-commerce. E-commerce will pose a great challenge to the traditional distribution channels, and many manufacturers or retailers will face many problems because they lack the necessary resources to support the distribution channels that meet the requirements of e-commerce. A study made by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in 2000 showed that when the sales based on the network grew too fast, it was easy to cause the transaction to fail, with an average of 28% of online purchases unsuccessful. Quick (2000) once made an actual investigation and ordered holiday gifts on 50 e-commerce websites. As a result, 20% of the goods were delayed or not delivered at all. In e-commerce transactions, faced with the rapidly increasing orders from customers, the traditional logistics plan of enterprises is often helpless. Customers buy goods through the Internet, hoping to get better prices and faster speed (Brooksher, 1999). In order to complete online transactions efficiently, enterprises need to obtain orders accurately, send goods from warehouses to customers in time, update price lists in time, obtain settlement information in time, and handle customer orders correctly. The challenges brought by these links are often difficult for enterprises to bear alone, so many enterprises will seek the support of third-party logistics enterprises (Kroll,1999; Karpinski,1999; Foster, 1999).
(C) Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of third-party logistics
The development of e-commerce puts forward new requirements for the new logistics network of enterprises, which must be able to handle small-scale and extremely frequent orders (Huppertz,1999; Copacino, 1997), must be able to deliver goods in time, must be able to exchange relevant information with customers in time (Karpinski, 1999), and must be able to provide online order processing (Hill,1999; Karpinski,1999; Dalton, 1999), must be able to share relevant information with others in the distribution channel (Karpinski,1999; Davidson, 2000). The use of logistics services outside the enterprise is usually called third-party logistics. Tank & Langley (1997) defines the third-party logistics as "using external service providers to undertake part or all of the logistics functions of enterprises". Lieb & Randall (1999) defines the provider of third-party logistics as "a company that provides all-round logistics services to customers". From the legal point of view, the third party logistics can also be regarded as contract logistics, the essence of which is that the consignor signs a contract with a third party, and the third party provides logistics services for the consignor according to the contract (La London &: Cooper, 1998). Murphy Company. Poist (2000), after comparing various definitions of third-party logistics, thinks that third-party logistics is "a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship established between the entrusting enterprise and the third party, and the third party undertakes the obligation to provide goods to customers and undertakes a wide range of service functions for the entrusting enterprise". Compared with traditional logistics enterprises, the integrated logistics services provided by third-party logistics enterprises have the following four most remarkable characteristics: (1) It is dominated by information technology, and integrated logistics services without information technology can only become empty talk, and information technology is the soul of third-party logistics enterprises; (2) Emphasize the integration of logistics functions and provide integrated functional services for users; (3) Providing personalized service, that is, third-party logistics is a kind of logistics service tailored for enterprises according to their actual situation and business processes; (4) Being able to provide networked services.
In the field of theoretical research, Sink &；; Langley (1997) studied the reasons for using third-party logistics, and thought that fundamentally speaking, cultivating core competence is the most fundamental reason for using third-party logistics. They classify the business activities and business processes of enterprises, and find that it is a feasible scheme to outsource those logistics that are not closely related to the cultivation of core competence to external service providers, so that enterprises can concentrate on developing those areas that are more strategic to enterprises. In addition, the third-party logistics can provide specialized technology, reduce costs, increase flexibility, improve service quality and increase available capital, which also explains the rapid development of third-party logistics (Bardi &; Tracey， 199 1； Lalonde & Malc,1992; Malta, 1994). In fact, at present, third-party logistics exists in many fields, and some traditional logistics activities, such as goods delivery, waybill review/payment, warehousing, goods warehousing, and goods concentration/distribution, are the most important areas of logistics outsourcing; In addition, logistics outsourcing also covers many fields (Lieb &; Randall, 1999).
Enterprises adopting third-party logistics will often bring more satisfactory results to enterprises (Leahy, Murphy &; Poist， 1995)； (Murphy & Poster, 2000; Lieb & ampRandall, 1999), and the benefits brought by third-party logistics are mainly reflected in reducing costs, improving service level, increasing flexibility, improving the possibility of entering a larger market, enhancing market responsiveness, helping to optimize business processes and increasing knowledge stock. For enterprises engaged in e-commerce, adopting the third-party logistics model to solve logistics problems has obvious strategic advantages, which are as follows: (1) enabling e-commerce enterprises to better concentrate on exerting their core competitiveness; (2) Third-party logistics providers can better carry out technological innovation according to market demand and make their services match the requirements of e-commerce; (3) Adopting the third-party logistics mode can realize large-scale distribution and save the logistics cost of e-commerce enterprises; (4) We can use the professional logistics technology of third-party logistics providers to shorten the delivery time, thus improving the corporate image of e-commerce enterprises. Although the third-party logistics can bring so many benefits, it also brings many shortcomings, mainly in poor cost control, difficult to ensure customer satisfaction, insufficient information and technology exchange, difficult to define the scope of business processes, and unsatisfactory performance.
The use of third-party logistics can greatly broaden the logistics capabilities of enterprises, and more and more enterprises have an increasing demand for various services that can increase the added value of goods. Especially in e-commerce activities, faced with the rapidly increasing orders through online transactions, the original logistics capabilities of enterprises often seem powerless. At this time, it is not only necessary for enterprises to use third-party logistics, but also often necessary. The main reason why customers buy online is that they can get convenience, favorable price and fast delivery (Brooksher, 1999). In order to make the network-based transactions go smoothly, enterprises need to process orders quickly, deliver goods from the warehouse to customers in time, track the order processing process and obtain all kinds of useful information to ensure that customers' orders are processed correctly and in time. If the enterprise can't do the above links well, then customers may turn to competitors or get goods from traditional channels. In order to meet this challenge, enterprises engaged in e-commerce have internal motivation to borrow third-party logistics to solve these problems (Kroll,1999; Karpinski, 1999). In fact, for those enterprises involved in e-commerce, there will be a lot of work to be done in order to deliver the goods to customers in time, but even so, these enterprises may still face the danger of "logistics chaos".
(D) the applicable environment of third-party logistics
Generally speaking, what kind of logistics mode different enterprises choose under e-commerce needs to be comprehensively considered from the following aspects: (1) enterprise scale and strength (large and medium-sized enterprises with abundant funds can support logistics by themselves, and small enterprises are suitable for entrusting logistics management to third-party professional logistics institutions); (2) the enterprise's logistics management ability and existing logistics network resources (strong logistics management ability, rich network resources, self-supporting logistics; If the logistics management level is low, the third-party logistics mode should be adopted); (3) the core and non-core business of an enterprise (according to the theory of specialized division of labor, outsourcing the logistics management of non-core business to a professional company engaged in this business is conducive to improving the core competitiveness of an enterprise); (4) the impact of logistics on the success of enterprises (if logistics plays a key role in enterprise strategy, enterprises are suitable for self-supporting logistics, or look for more reliable third-party logistics agents to establish long-term and stable logistics alliances).
Without a logistics system suitable for e-commerce, it is difficult for e-commerce to develop widely. On the other hand, without an efficient, reasonable and smooth e-commerce system, it is difficult to give full play to the role of logistics, which will affect the development of e-commerce. But in the end, e-commerce will change logistics, and the improvement of logistics system will further promote the development of e-commerce. At present, the use of third-party logistics has gradually become an inevitable choice for enterprises to reduce assets and save logistics costs. With the development of more and more traditional transportation enterprises, warehousing enterprises and freight forwarding enterprises in the direction of logistics outsourcing, the number of third-party logistics enterprises that enterprises can choose is gradually increasing. Choosing the right logistics enterprises and cooperating with them effectively is an important part for enterprises to gain advantages in market competition.
Firstly, this paper re-examines the third-party logistics in e-commerce environment and analyzes the problems faced by the development of third-party logistics enterprises in e-commerce. On this basis, the development strategies of third-party logistics enterprises under e-commerce are put forward, including establishing core competitiveness, establishing regional alliances, providing three-dimensional services to customers, establishing strategic partnerships with customers and cultivating professional logistics talents.