چرا شرکت های تجارت اینترنت با ارائه دهندگان خدمات لجستیک در کانال های توزیع خود همکاری دارند ؟: نقش هزینه های مبادله و قدرت شبکه

The Internet has redefined information-sharing boundaries in distribution channels and opened new avenues for managing logistics services. In the process, firms have started to incorporate new service providers in their commercial interactions with customers over the Internet. This paper studies conceptually and empirically why Internet commerce firms (ICFs) have established relationships with these providers. Focusing on logistics services in outbound distribution channels, we rely on transaction cost theory to reveal that low levels of asset specificity and uncertainty drive Internet commerce firms to establish these relationships. Moreover, we apply strategic network theory to show that Internet commerce firms seek these providers because they offer access to relationship networks that bundle many complementary logistics services. In addition, logistics service providers make these services available across new and existing relationships between the Internet commerce firms, their customers, and their vendors.

The growth of electronic commerce has driven Internet commerce firms (ICFs) – retailers and other organizations that market products over the Web – to increasingly share market demand data with other firms so as to enrich the order fulfillment services they offer to customers (Frohlich and Westbrook, 2002). Along these efforts, ICFs have started seeking logistics service providers to tap into resources and skills that could improve their fulfillment capabilities (Dutta and Segev, 1999). These logistics service providers are not simply variants of transportation companies, and as such, they are not to be confused with what are known nowadays as third party logistics (3PL) firms. They offer logistics services, of course, but they could also enable ICFs to leverage other distribution parties’ logistical resources and skills in order to fulfill their customer orders more effectively. They may use their assets to take care of product returns, for instance, or work with established carriers on “last-mile” deliveries. Or their value may be primarily in managing order information shared among distribution parties—e.g., centralizing inventory data, especially when products are being shipped directly from upstream echelons in the distribution channel. Logistics service providers such as Parcel Direct, for instance, participate in this kind of activity to ultimately assist ICFs in consolidating orders for drop-shipping to their customers.

Following the approach proposed by Anderson and Gerbing (1988), the correlation coefficients in Table 2 were used to perform a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and assess the adequacy of the factor structure pertaining to the measurement model. This model includes the latent factors capturing the constructs pertaining to asset specificity, uncertainty, and strength of networked governance structure. Subsequently, maximum-likelihood estimation was used to test the structural model, in accordance with the correlation coefficients in Table 2 and the path-related hypotheses shown in Fig. 1.