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Optimal pricing of crowdsourcing logistics services with social delivery capacity

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Abstract

Based on the sharing economy, crowdsourcing logistics services share social delivery freelancers instead of traditional full-time delivery employees. The optimal dynamic pricing model of crowdsourcing logistics services, which could be applied to adjust the social delivery capacity supply to meet the stochastic demand especially during the peak period, is established based on optimal control theory. We study optimal pricing strategies under both conditions when the supply and the demand is balanced and accumulated delivery orders are minimized. Moreover, the impact of delivery riders’ wage ratio on pricing and platforms’ expected revenue are analyzed. It is verified by numerical simulation results that optimal dynamic pricing strategies of crowdsourcing logistics services could effectively balance supply and demand, further maximize the expected revenue of platforms. The growth rate of optimal pricing of crowdsourcing logistics services is increasing with respect to the delivery riders’ wage ratio. However, the expected revenue of crowdsourcing logistics platforms declines as the wage ratio increases.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71872038, 71832001) and the Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Project (17YJA630099).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Glorious Sun School of Business and Management, Donghua University, Shanghai, 200051, China

    Wenjie Wang & Lei Xie

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  1. Wenjie Wang
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  2. Lei Xie
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Correspondence to Wenjie Wang.

Additional information

A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Systems Management (IESM), 2019.

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Wang, W., Xie, L. Optimal pricing of crowdsourcing logistics services with social delivery capacity. J Comb Optim 43, 1447–1469 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10878-020-00693-y

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