Nowadays, online grocery shopping market is at the developing
stage and in the buyer’s situation, and the competition for shares
is fierce. Therefore, there are more choices for online shoppers,
consequently the surplus benefits is nearly dependent on online
shoppers completely, that is, β → (0,0) .In this situation, the
benefits from consumer logistics for e-grocers are mainly
dependent on online order quantity. For the objective reasons,
such as shopping habits and preferences, lots of e-grocers’
usually fulfill logistics services according to online shoppers’
requests, and they are not positive to reduce logistics cost and
improve logistics services. However, with the development of
online grocery shopping market and consumer logistics
outsourcing market, and with the change of consumers’
shopping habits and preferences, the maximum outcome is the
pursuit of consumer logistics services, therefore the problems as
following must be considered:
A. Building a Thorough Evaluating System for the Service
Quality of Consumer Logistics
We can know from the principal-agent model mentioned above,
online shoppers reward and punish e-grocers’ logistics service
according to their effort degree, such as returning purchase and
ceasing trades etc. However, e-grocers’ efforts can not be
observed or measured directly, only judged from observable
service quality and logistics cost. Where cost can be reflected by
currency, but the quality of consumer logistics can hardly be
reflected directly, which suggests a thorough system to evaluate
consumer logistics service quality should be designed as
quickly as possible.
B. Building an Effective Incentive Mechanism
In the process of consumer logistics being fulfilled, the
objectives for online shoppers and e-grocers are divergent,
therefore the former must design an incentive mechanism
according to observable information, and two purposes must be
served as follows:
1) Making e-grocers fulfill consumer logistics as requested by
online shoppers. Online shoppers make the logistics tasks clear,
and e-grocers maximize their profits in the constraint of the
tasks.
2) Restricting moral hazard of e-grocers
Generally, online shoppers choose more than two e-grocers to
buy grocery, and then e-grocers provide the products with extra
logistics service. In order to get perfect logistics services, online
shoppers can reward e-grocers more order quantity and loyalty
after evaluating e-grocers. Because preferences and requests
and time value etc. are different from each other, online
shoppers should make an incentive mechanism to restraint
e-grocers’ moral hazard accordingly.
C. Redesigning a Coordination Mechanism.
In EGS environment, the online store is a bridge to coordinate
both consumers and e-grocers. E-grocers can collect
consumption preferences from their online stores and at the
same time establish interactive network communities to allow
consumers to provide tips in their fulfilling process and
evaluations, and share these with others to reduce and get rid of
information asymmetry after consumer logistics transfer.
Secondly, e-grocers can also improve advertisements and order
information to further the consumers’ trust on them.
D. Breeding an E- Grocery Shopping Market
Market breeding mainly depends on marketing methods. It may
take time for an emerging E-Grocery market to gain popularity
among consumers as they tend to have concerns about new
things. However, Ellis finds that consumers can accept the
groceries delivered after they are breeded, and they would
believe sometimes that the groceries are fresher than those in
traditional stores [8].Therefore, e-grocers strengthen the level of
their services.