Online Logistics/Reverse Logistics Marketplace - The concept
Over the last decade the concept of an online market-place and e-commerce have gained all the requisite importance. The way the Logistics/Reverse logistics is handled on a market-place generally depends upon a number of factors including but not limited to the business policy of the Marketplace. For e.g consider a marketplace which takes care of your deliveries if you are a seller, and you returns if you are a customer. The way this would work from an e-commerce perspective would be as follows: 1. A seller would create shipments on a front-end system and on requesting a carrier to collect the same - the Marketplace carrier would collect and deliver the product to the customer address. 2. A Customer would create return parcels on a front-end system and on requesting a carrier to collect the same - the Marketplace carrier would collect and return the product to a return address.
With this possibility in mind, let us consider a scenario of a market-place where, logistics service providers can also list their services and offerings to deliver products from and to various locations. If this can be enabled the market-place would stand to gain from the immense number of transactions between sellers/customers and the logistics service providers.
Taking this thought further - we may also envision an exclusive market-place for logistics service providers. I could actually find this idea just begenning to bud in India when i happened to visit the following website: http://www.klickcouriers.com/. This concept is quite close to a "makemytrip.com" or a "yatra.com". On Makemytrip and yatra the customer gets a choice to select the best possible airline or a hotel, whereas, on klickcouriers the customer gets a choice to select the best possible Courier/Logistics service. Though not a hundred percent market-place, the concept has a scope to take a larger picture.
What would happen if such a logistics marketplace gets embedded with an online retail marketplace like amazon or ebay? The face of online retailing would change for sure. Just to highlight a few constraints in the implementation of an online logistics marketplace - I would say there are numerous regulations from a legal perspective when an international delivery happens. The operational costs would generally be very high for international logistics as many sellers and customers may generally not deal in bulk on a retail marketplace. Having said that the logistics costs and the per uint delivery costs would be lower on B2B marketplaces where the dealings would be in bulk.
