Crowdsourced Freight Delivery The value created via logistics platform

Abstract

With the rapid development of Internet information technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing (Perego et al., 2011), the sharing economy has been gradually applied to various industries as a new economic form. Crowdsourcing logistics is an application of the sharing economy in the logistics industry. Due to the huge freight demand and the strong support of the Chinese government for the development of the “Internet + Logistics” model, crowdsourced freight logistics in China has attracted attention from many investors. However, the uncertainty of the profit model has brought great challenges to the companies of the crowdsourcing freight logistics platform. It is well worth studying the issue of feasibility and value creation for the logistics platform. This paper used the research method of case study to conduct research on Huochebang, a leading company of China's crowdsourcing freight logistics platform. Through PESTEL analysis and SWOT analysis, this research aims to analyze the factors that affect the feasibility of the case company and put forward some suggestions for improvement. This paper not only studied Huochebang's operating model, the services it provided, and the situation of its competitors, but also collected user views through semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that although the crowdsourcing logistics platform model is still immature and faces various opportunities and challenges, in general, the major external factors are conducive to the development of crowdsourcing logistics platforms. The logistics platform of Huochebang has already solved many problems for the logistics industry, creates value through both online and offline services, and remains to be improved in many aspects such as corporate image and customer loyalty.