Crowd Logistics

Delivery by private individuals

With Crowd Logistics, ordinary citizens – individually or collectively – organize the shipping of parcels in the course of their normal movements. A technological platform is generally used for this.

This new trend should not be ignored. The first pilot projects have already been set up abroad, by new actors (e.g. Uber Rush – US, Instacart – US, Parcify – B) and established companies (e.g. My Ways from DHL, On My Way from Amazon).

Opportunities?

The aim of this project is to demonstrate to companies the opportunities – rather than the threats – of crowd logistics by clearly revealing the economic and social impact based on workable business models. This will be achieved through concrete calculations of return on investment, impact analyses and practical testing.

From insight to pilot projects

What exactly is planned?

1. To give an insight into the new trend emerging in the sector. Traditional businesses (DHL, Amazon), disruptive businesses (Uber) and new start-ups (Instacart) are all taking their first steps in this area. An overview will be provided of what is happening in the market.
2. To outline the legal framework, with particular attention to the aspect of product responsibility.
3. To define crowd-based applications and describe the underlying business models. Logistics companies, retailers and service providers are all launching new services based on crowd logistics, for both B2C and B2B. What do these various business models look like?
4. To calculate the economic feasibility (ROI) of the business models.
5. More extensive impact analysis on all stakeholders in the supply chain for B2C and B2B (smaller quantities). To this end, a multi-actor multi-criteria analysis will be performed on the economically feasible business models.
6. Set up a pilot project for both B2C and B2B applications to validate the economic and social impact.