Electronic commerce and logistics: the last mile dilemma reference framework and simulation

The electronic commerce companies that are involved in BtoC business and physical goods delivery have to deal with the Last Mile Logistics Dilemma, looking for the most apropriate solutions according to the characteristics of business models and service concepts proposed. To provide some useful suggestions to this dilemma, the article is aimed at: a) highlighting the crucial relationship between such e-commerce aproaches and logistics planning, in which the management of physical flows plays a fundamental role in providing profitability to the business; b) proposing a reference model to underly the relevant costs in the trade off between home delivery and delivery to a shop or pick-up point; c) linking those relevant costs to the main design and management leverages that can be used to define an apropriate and coherent solution to the problem; d)showing the risk of the “e-commerce trap”, that occurs when click and mortar companies have to manage multiple delivery processes and related costs.The work offers an analytical aproach to the last mile logistics design and the implementation of main alternatives. The final section reports a simulation of the final delivery process for “family durable products” showing how the described framework can be put in practice and how the different variables identified can influence the economics of the distribution process.