The Rise of Crowd Logistics: A New Way to Co‐Create Logistics Value

Abstract

Patterned on crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, a new crowd practice has emerged in recent years: crowd logistics. In this paper, we propose a first conceptualization of this growing phenomenon. Crowd logistics is a novel way of providing logistics services that taps into the dormant logistics resources and capabilities of individuals, using mobile applications and web‐based platforms. Although crowd logistics has been widely discussed in the business world, it has not yet been the subject of any academic publication. Following an exploratory case study approach, we review the websites of 57 crowd logistics initiatives around the world and highlight the main distinctive characteristics of crowd logistics, as compared to traditional business logistics. We introduce a segmented analysis in which crowd logistics solutions are classified according to four types of service offered. Finally, we introduce six theoretical propositions on the future development of crowd logistics. At a theoretical level, our findings contribute to enriching the service‐dominant logic perspective in the logistics field by conceptualizing the crowd as a co‐creator of logistics value. At a managerial level, our findings contribute to identifying which types of crowd logistics services are more likely to threaten or disrupt traditional business.

Crowd logistics: an opportunity for more sustainable urban freight transport?

“…The crowd is motivated by additional earning opportunities that are flexible, personalised and adaptable to their lifestyle [2,23,25]. From a social point of view, the local character of CL is stressed, enabling the crowd to have personal contact with their neighbourhood and empowering communities [2,9,26]. The most significant contributions of CL are, however, envisioned from an environmental perspective.…”

“…However, depending on other activities the platform provider offers, this role can alter or expand. Carbone et al [26] define the difference between platforms in which logistics services are the purpose on the one hand, and are supporting collaboration on the other hand.…”

“…With regards to logistics, CL provides consumers access to a more extensive range of products [14] and superior delivery service by being faster [3,14,31], more flexible [2,24,25], more convenient [23], more personal [14,23], traceable in real-time [15] and better priced [2,3,23]. Businesses benefit from CL since it has the potential to reach a large area [2,9], relies upon a flexible workforce [26] and requires only an asset-light infrastructure that makes investments in vehicle fleet, employees and maintenance redundant [2,3,14,16,25,26]. The crowd is motivated by additional earning opportunities that are flexible, personalised and adaptable to their lifestyle [2,23,25].…”

“…Although initially framed within the sharing economy concept [24], with social relationships at its heart [26], the expansion of more utilitarian approaches urged for a broader definition. The typology of Rougès and Montreuil [23] includes three distinctions: efficiency versus human, trust versus control and business versus community.…”

“…However, as leading enterprises (retailers and LSPs) are embracing this paradigm shift in the distribution of work, by outsourcing to the crowd in the cloud [18], much of the thinking and discussion about CL has developed from the practitioner's side [26]. Examples of such initiatives include Myways, a terminated pilot project of DHL that was launched in Sweden [53], bringr, an experiment by the Belgian postal operation bpost [54] and efforts of retailer Walmart in the USA, at first with in-store customers that served as crowd, later on in cooperation with CL start-ups Lyft, Deliv and UberRUSH [55].…”