Challenges Faced By Online Retailers In Logistics In India: An Essay.

What are the logistic challenges faced by the online retailers operating in India? What tools, techniques, and operational parameters need improvement to mitigate challenges and achieve higher efficiency? Discuss in details.
Amazon is successfully using logistics for a retail revolution. How are they so successful and unique in creating and replicating business models across the globe? Study their innovative practices and analyse value addition.

Objective and Framework

Internet has emerged as one of the biggest technological development of the recent era because of the ease that it had offered in almost every aspect of life (Dutton & Blank, 2015). From education to healthcare and homes all the sectors have been benefited by the emergence of the internet. One of the sectors that have witnessed drastic change is the business world. The association of the business and internet have given birth to different terminologies such as e-marketing, e-filling, e-care and several others. One of the most prominent terminologies is the e-retailing that stands for online retailing.

Online retailing refers to the B2C (business 2 consumer) format that is undertaken through means of online (Verma, Sharma & Sheth, 2016). In simple words, online retailing is the selling and purchasing of goods, services and actions through online means. According to the data provided by Statista.com, the number of consumers of online retailing was around 1.66 billion in 2017. The above figure is greater than the most populous country that is China which have a population of 1.411 billion. In terms of money, the total sales from online mode exceeded the amount of 2.3 trillion US dollar and is projected to grow up to 4.48 trillion by 2021 ("Topic: E-commerce worldwide", 2018). Asia pacific contributed 12.1% of the total figure discussed above. Hence, it becomes crucial to assess the market of Asia Pacific and the paper is aimed at doing the same. Therefore, the paper has taken the second most populous country of Asia and World as the geographical domain of study.

The section above has established a base for the online retailing and selected India as the geographical domain for the study. Hence, it is crucial to identify the factors that are constraining the growth of online retailing in the Indian Market (Mathew & Mishra, 2014). The barriers of online retailing in India is extensive that includes legal issues, working barriers, returns & cancellations along with several others.  One of the most prominent challenge that is being faced by the online retailers in India is the logistics challenge. India is greatly dependent on the rural areas and when the logistics is unable to reach in those rural areas, it is forcing the online sellers to limit themselves to limited zone in a very large market of over 1.3 billion people (Thakur & Srivastava, 2015). Similarly, there are multiple other challenges that needs to be identified and mitigated. The paper in discussion has detailed the challenges faced by the online retailers in logistics.

Logistics Challenges faced by Online Retailers in India

The following section is dedicated towards identification of the challenges faced by the online retailers in India. The discussed section will detail the challenges and have been succeeded by the mitigation actions for the identified challenges before summarising the discussion to conclude on the report.

The prominence of the online retailing has been established in the sections above along with the challenges faced by the online retailing in India has also been established. One of the most prominent challenge is logistics and the following paragraphs presents the challenges faced by the online retailing industry in India because of logistics.

Increased cost is primarily the most concerning challenge for the logistics in India. The Indian online retailing market is estimated to be of around $ 13 billion and every one of the online sellers wants to get something out of it giving birth to high level of competition. Hence, the firms with objectives of becoming competitive leaders in the Indian online retailing market transports the products through airways which counts heavily on the firm’s financial resources (Benerjee, 2019). Time is not the only issue with the choice of air transportation but the snarled roads and lack of river transportation is also one of the prominent reason for the choice of air transport. The Indian online retailing giant Flipkart as well as the international retailing giant Amazon and most of the other online sellers chose the air transport. However, the challenge of logistic does not ends with increased cost of air transport. The commercial airlines serving as the logistic partner for the online sellers also remove the parcels of the online seller to make space for the customers. The statement made by Rahul Chari, the supply chain head of Flipkart, India’s largest online retailing service can be taken in account to understand the challenge that is faced by the online retailers of India. He quoted “It is unfortunate, but offloading does happen and we have to make sure our delivery promises take that into consideration” (Bose, 2014).

Hence, in summary it would be justified to state that the discussed challenge that is the increased cost of logistics is one of the most prominent challenge that needs to be mitigated so that the online retailers can enhance their productivity and revenue.

Adoption of new technology is also one of the primary challenge for the logistics of the online retailers of India. The challenge is not because of lack of technology as most of the online retailers such as Amazon, Walmart and other mega giants are using technology with the objective of enhancing their productivity but the reason is perception and infrastructure of India (Thiyagaranjan & Ali, 2016). The perception in discussion here refers to the perception of the online retailers as well as the customers. The online retailers prefer the pen-paper method which has become primitive and unorganised. Furthermore, if the firm decides to adopt state-of-art technology for enhancing their performance and productivity, the lack of proper change management strategy and awareness about it develops constraints for the firm. Change management is the method that ensures that the change that is being introduced into the firm are smooth and efficient (Kalia, Kaur & Singh, 2018). Implementation of the new technology or processes will induct changes to the conventional approach of the business model and day-to-say practices. Furthermore, it resistance from the end-users is also major challenge.

Another reason for the lack of adoption of new technology in the logistics of online retailing services is the lack of proper infrastructure. The use of drones for logistics is one of the approaches that had been adopted in the major countries and Amazon is one of the frequent users is drone logistics (Ruby, 2016). However, the drone logistics in India by Amazon is also extremely limited. The reason for the limitation can be based upon the inadequate infrastructure for the technological adoption. India does not have a proper regulation for the use of drones, IoT and other technologies that can offer assistance in the logistics of online retailing. The lack of proper legal framework could be understood by the fact that India have drafted its privacy policy in the third quarter of 2018 and it is yet to be approved by the parliament of the country (Chakraborty & Roy Chowdhury, 2018). Additionally, zones with low connectivity is also one of the challenges that impact the logistics of online retailing.

Hence, it can be summarised to state that the perception and lack of proper infrastructure is the most prominent challenges that restricts the online sellers from adopting technology. The lack of adoption of technology is developing challenges for logistics that could be mitigated by adoption of technology. The challenges and threats in discussion are live-time update of the traffic, cost saving on use of drones for delivery, IoT will also prove to be life savings as several accident cases of logistics services have been identified. So, immediate and proper attention should be cited with objective of mitigating the challenges of logistics.

Globalisation has also developed challenges for the logistics of online services. The globalisations have gained attention of different mega online retailing giants into the vast Indian Markets. The challenge that have been developed is the customer’s expectation. The above made statement could be better understood by the example of Amazon (Banerjee, 2019). Amazon uses its services such as Amazon prime that delivers product within 2 days and Amazon prime Now that delivers within an hour, is raising bar of expectation for the customers. The customers have now started to expect that other online retailers will also offer them services within a very short frame of time. Amazon with its vast resources and technological advantage can manage the delivery but the same cannot be stated for other online retailers. Flipkart, the biggest retailer of India is also losing its consumer base due to the delay in delivery. The same can be stated for other small and medium online retailers. Hence, it becomes crucial for other online retailers to adopt techniques and tools that are fast and efficient and are capable of delivering the goods as soon as possible to the customers.

It has also led to over pressuring of the logistics services of different online retailers. Furthermore, the over pressure on the employees of the logistics is leading to employee turnover which is undesirable for the firms and the supply chain associates as well. The online retailers with their own chain of logistics such as Flipkart which owns E-kart is also witnessing a large employee turnover (Kumar, 2015). The turnover is one of the most prominent challenge for any firm as it forces them to compromise on the quality of human resource. The Human resources of an organisation needs to be trained and developed over period of time and losing them due to over pressure enforces the firms to invest more time, effort and resources in developing new talents. Furthermore, it also consumes time for the talents to cope up with the company’s model of work and technologies.

Hence, to summarise it would be adequate to state that the challenges posed by globalisation is one of the major challenge that needs to be coped up with so that the logistics of the online retailers in India could leverage the vast Indian online retail market.

Lack of Research and Development is also one of the major challenges for the logistics services of online retailers in India. Logistics can be considered as one of the primary pillar for the business. The reason for the above made statement can be justified by the fact that logistics impacts all the sectors of a business. In case of the online retailing, the logistics is one of the primary component of the business success and hence, their development should be priority (Srivastava, Verma & Tripathi, 2017). However, in case of the Indian online retail industry, the perception prevails that there is no need for R&D in logistics as they just collect the goods and delivers it. The discussed perception is restricting the development of the logistics industry. If proper R&D will be done for the logistics industry, then the firm can identify the factors that will enable on-time delivery metrics. The identification can then be worked upon so that proper supply chain strategy can be developed. Researching on the logistics approaches offered by the scholars and practitioners along with the successful supply chain in existence will determine certain enablers (Sethi, Ahuja & Singla, 2018). Those enablers can then be compared and contrasted with the business environment, business requirement and other crucial aspects to develop a proper logistics management strategy.

The lack of R&D is also letting the employee turnover ratio grow higher while letting the fall of employee satisfaction ratio. The lack of R&D is also limiting the adequate studies on the employees that is leading to development of great level of dissatisfaction among the employees, which is undesirable. Without proper R&D, the logistics of online retailing have also started to fall behind in adoption of state of art technology that will be catastrophic for the long term sustainability of the firms and the industry as well. Hence, to summarise it would be adequate to state that logistics of online retailing in India is facing challenges because of lack of proper R&D.

Management can be considered as the most prominent challenge for the logistics of the Indian e-Retail Industry. Poor corporate infrastructure, unorganised truck ownership, lack of proper documentation and several others are example of how unorganised and inefficient is the management of the logistics in the online retail industry of India. An article authored by Verma, Sharma & Sheth (2016), states that the value of management and its sub-operations such as change management, inventory management, Human resource management and similar others are given very little attention. The above discussed statement can be taken in account to state the fact that the logistics of the Indian online retail industry also lacks proper management. Furthermore, the contracting problems in the logistics industry of India is also one of the major challenge. Improper logistics management leads to accidents, vehicle breakdowns and other crucial challenge for the logistics industry (Papadopoulos et al., 2017). Furthermore, the discussion from above can be taken in account to state that the human resource management in the logistics is also a challenge.

The challenge of management in the logistics of the online retailing develops great challenges for the online sellers. It leads to delay of delivery which leads to cancellation of order and in certain cases the firm also had to incur financial penalties (Venkatesh, Rathi & Patwa, 2015). Employee turnover due to lack of human resource management, failure of technologies due to inadequate technology management and change management along with several other challenges are posed to the logistics and eventually to the online retail industry of India (Kapoor & Sharma, 2016). Hence, it is crucial that proper management strategies should be developed so that the efficiency of the Indian online retail market can be leveraged by making logistics as a catalyst for competitive leadership.

The section above has detailed the most primary challenges of the logistics in India’s online retail industry and the crucial importance of mitigating them have also been discussed and hence, the discussed section is aimed at detailing the mitigation approaches that should be adopted by the online retail industry to mitigate the challenges of logistics.

1. Increased cost is one of the major challenge that is faced by the logistics of the online retail industry and to mitigate the discussed challenge, one of the basic approach that can be adopted is consolidating loads. The consolidating of the load with collaborators and even with the competitors will be a win-win situation for all. It will enable the firms to ship their product along with the products of other firm who are transporting bulk products to a location. The small shareholder can pay some rent that will be cost effective than hiring an entire logistic service while the large shareholder will also gain the benefit of reduced cost. Another approach is the river transportation. India is rich with rivers but until now, it had not been leveraged and in the most recent case the river has been used for the transportation of goods. The firms can leverage the river logistics opportunity as the trend is young in India so the price will be less and it will also contribute to their corporate social responsibility (CSR) because river logistics is considered to be sustainable logistics.
2. The online retailing industry of India should focus on the training and development of the employees and as part of their CSR should also educate the residents of their geographical domain in the advancements and needs of technological development. The discussed approach will not only benefit the firm to enhance their credibility but will also ease the path of technological adoption by changing the perception towards technology. The infrastructural issue can be resolved by writing petitions to Indian Government for developing proper framework. The likes of Google, Facebook and others are also offering support to the Digital Initiative of India and young firms, which can be leveraged to develop a better infrastructure.
3. With proper focus over the management and adding value to the operations, the firms in online retailing business of India can cope up with the challenge of globalisation. Tesla is one of the prime example of the firm that through its innovation have coped up with global brands with the limited resources it had. One of the approach that can be accounted to attain the discussed recommendation is adoption of action centric leadership which focuses on the task as well as the team and individual members of the team. The discussed approach will mitigate the over pressuring of the employees and will benefit the logistics by mitigating employee dissatisfaction and turnover ratio.
4. The online retail industry should develop a dedicated team for research and development while providing them with disruptive technologies and tools such as Data analytics. The use of data analytics will enable them to understand the challenges of logistics and propose recommendations for mitigation of the identified challenges. Furthermore, they will also propose plans for the management of the unorganised logistics vehicles and proper strategy for logistics management. The use of disruptive technologies such as the IoT and cloud services for safe transportation, identification of delivery metrics and other benefits will also be offered with introduction of a dedicated research and development team. However, it should be ensured that the R&D team should be skilled and in possession of state-of-art technologies so that they can offer high level of work efficiency and feasible solutions.
5. The online retail firms should also have a dedicated management team which accounts for different strategies and based on the vision, mission and goals of the organisation develop a proper management strategy for the firm. Project management tools such as MS project, ERP, Accounting Systems and other should also be taken into consideration so that the efficiency of the activities and strategies can be ensured.

In summary it can be stated that the logistics of the online retail industry in India is facing certain challenges that needs to be mitigated and the proposed recommendations can help the firms in attaining the discussed objective. Furthermore, focus on the technology, management and R&D will ensure the discussed objective is attained.

References

Banerjee, M. (2019). Development of Omnichannel in India: Retail Landscape, Drivers and Challenges. In Exploring Omnichannel Retailing (pp. 115-137). Springer, Cham.

Bose, N. (2014). Logistical challenges hit growth of online retailers in India. Retrieved from https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/logistical-challenges-hit-growth-of-online-retailers-in-india/story/207073.html

Chakraborty, S., & Roy Chowdhury, A. (2018). Privacy policy: Draft data protection law has many gaps. Retrieved from https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/privacy-policy-draft-data-protection-law-has-many-gaps/1386938/

Dutton, W., & Blank, G. (2015). Cultures on the Internet.

Kalia, P., Kaur, N., & Singh, T. (2018). E-Commerce in India: evolution and revolution of online retail. In Mobile Commerce: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 736-758). IGI Global.

Kapoor, A., & Sharma, D. (2016). Meta-analysis for online retail performance.

Kumar, V. R. (2015). Online Retail in India–A disruptive force. SAMVAD, 9, 45-48.

Mathew, P. M., & Mishra, S. (2014). Online retailing in India: Linking internet usage, perceived risks, website attributes and past online purchase behaviour. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 65(1), 1-17.

Papadopoulos, T., Gunasekaran, A., Dubey, R., & Fosso Wamba, S. (2017). Big data and analytics in operations and supply chain management: managerial aspects and practical challenges. Production Planning & Control, 28(11-12), 873-876.

Ruby, K. (2016). E-tailing in India-Growth, Challenges and Opportunities. Journal of Marketing and HR, 2(1), 102-112.

Sethi, A. P. S., Ahuja, I. P. S., & Singla, A. (2018). Shifts Between Technology Push and Market Pull Strategies for Sustainable Development in Manufacturing Industries. In Global Value Chains, Flexibility and Sustainability (pp. 319-331). Springer, Singapore.

Srivastava, A., Verma, P., & Tripathi, A. (2017). Transformation and business emergence of Indian ICT sector with reference to Indian ICT policies. Transformation, 2(6).

Thakur, R., & Srivastava, M. (2015). A study on the impact of consumer risk perception and innovativeness on online shopping in India. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 43(2), 148-166.

Thiyagarajan, G., & Ali, S. (2016). Analysis of Reverse Logistics Implementation Barriers in Online Retail Industry. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 9(19).

Topic: E-commerce worldwide. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/topics/871/online-shopping/

Venkatesh, V. G., Rathi, S., & Patwa, S. (2015). Analysis on supply chain risks in Indian apparel retail chains and proposal of risk prioritization model using Interpretive structural modeling. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 26, 153-167.

Verma, V., Sharma, D., & Sheth, J. (2016). Does relationship marketing matter in online retailing? A meta-analytic approach. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(2), 206-217.

“Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Doug Hofstadte” was the first book to be sold by Amazon on 3^rd April of 1995. Since, the sales of the first book the firm have never stopped achieving milestones (Fujiyoshi et al., 2017). The firm in its very first month sold the discussed book to people in all of the 50 states around US and in 45 different countries around the globe. Now, the firm is the most trusted online retailing store and is showing no sign of slowing down (Greenberg 2017). Different factors are associated with the success of the firm. From strong leadership to innovation and several others. One of the prime factors for the success of the Amazon is its logistics which is considered to be one of the most innovative and revolutionary.

Before, the intervention and redefining of the logistics by Amazon it was considered to be as a Staid business, but now it is considered to be one of the frontline businesses that ensured the success of the firm. Though Amazon is not solely responsible for the changing face of logistics but it undoubtedly is one of the most prominent motivators that have attracted attention towards the logistics business (Daugherty, Bolumole & Grawe, 2018). Different businesses have pursued the way of logistics established by Amazon that extends cross borders. Hence, it is crucial to identify the change and impact posed by the Amazon in the logistic industry. To attain the objective discussed above, it is crucial that the innovation added by the firm, approaches adopted by it to add value and several other aspects needs to be detailed and the discussed paper aims to detail those aspects. The discussion below has attempted to present an insight into the domain of how Amazon was able to become successful while offering uniqueness and replicating business models around the globe. Their innovative and value addition practices have also been evaluated to present a summarised view.

Amazon was declared as the most innovative firm of 2017 and the strategy of the firm justifies it (Carter, Kosmol & Kaufmann, 2017). Amazon’s strategy is to act locally while thinking at a global level by leveraging its logistics capabilities, massive scale and balance sheets. The discussed strategy is supported by certain sub-strategies and they have been listed below.

1. Use of technology for logistics purposes. The strategy of Amazon has made it evident that logistics is one of the primary factor for the success of the discussed firm and the firm has adopted all measures to ensure that the efficiency of the logistic process is increased with time and situation. The first effort to attaining the discussed objective is introduction of state of art technology in its logistic services. One of the prime introduction to the discussed service by Amazon is AI abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence (Greenberg, 2017). AI is one of the most disruptive technology that is still in its development phase and is witnessing continuous upgradation. Furthermore, the technology in discussion is considered to be one of the most unreliable because of its unpredictability and lack of knowledge about the technology. However, the firm decided to adopt it and is using it for the delivery purposes. The technology is used for searching addresses. In the country like India, the residential addresses are often considered to be only “best guestimates of location” making delivery of products a challenging task (Greenberg, 2017). The application provided to the delivery associate of the firm is developed with consideration of AI and machine learning that offers better precision of the location that includes a confidence score between 0-100 for an address.
2. Fulfilment centres and Expansion of logistics. Amazon is known for its innovative and creative thinking but another one of its very notable aspect is its foreseeing of future capability (Christopher, 2016). The firm plans for the future and as part of foreseeing future, the firm have adopted measures to ensure that its future is safe and it continues to stay as a global leader both at global and local level. The firm is developing fulfilment centres in major cities of a country that enables it to fulfil its obligations as part of Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime Now. Fulfilment centres are the centres established by Amazon to ensure that th delivery process to the customers while receiving process from the sellers is easy and efficient. The firm has extended its number of fulfilment centres in India to 67 (Das & Ara, 2015). It enables the firm to deliver the products to its customer in a short frame of time. Furthermore, the firm is also developing its logistics infrastructure by acquisition or collaboration with major logistic service providers of the country. The extended logistic infrastructure and easy access to the fulfilment centres is beneficial for the sellers as well. The reason for the above mentioned statement can be justified by the fact that easy availability of the fulfilment centres enables the sellers to deliver the goods to the firm in a cost effective manner (Hofmann & Osterwalder, 2017). The cost effectiveness of the seller enables the firm to offer better service and a high level of satisfaction for the consumers.   
3. Assistance for the sellers. The point above has made it evident that Amazon is not only concerned with the consumers but takes adequate care of its sellers as well. The decision of Amazon is adequate because, it is aware of the fact that without sellers the firm will not be able to satisfy its customers which will impact the sustainability of the firm (Hong, Park & Jung, 2018). Hence, to mitigate the discussed risk, the firm have dedicated one of its logistics department for the sellers. the discussed logistics section is integrated with the marketing team of the firm. The logistics of the firm along with the marketing team visits small and medium products manufacturer and collects product pictures and details so that they can promote the product on their platform and earn revenue against it. Furthermore, it offers the firm with the advantage of having a loyal seller that will benefit the firm to attain a long term sustainability. The discussed use of logistics is one of the most promising use of logistics and is setting example for others to follow.
4. Dedicated Research & Development. The firm is well aware of the need for research and development in different aspects of business. Furthermore, the firm is also aware of the fact that research and development is heavily influenced by the geographical domain and hence, the firm has a dedicated R&D centres in the countries where the firm is attempting to develop a stronghold (Huang, 2015). India is one of the primary target of the firm and hence, the firm has established its second largest R&D centre in Bangalore, the IT hub of India after Seattle. The centre in Bangalore is dedicated towards determination of ways and approaches through which it can offer better user experience. The user experience of the consumers of Amazon is greatly influenced by the delivery metrics of the products (Lasisi, McCullen & Turner, 2015). Hence, the R&D attempts to identify ways through which it can identify better delivery option that is beneficial for both the firm and its customers. The AI, mapping and other areas of logistics are being focused so that it can be improved.  

Baird analyst Colin Sebastian once quoted “We continue to expect Amazon to add logistics primarily to meet its own growth, but over time, and in incremental fashion, we believe it is likely that Amazon will offer this expertise to third parties to help subsidize those costs” (Mohammed, 2016). The quotation by Sebastian has proved to be true and Amazon has truly amazed the world with its strategy for logistics. However, the development of Amazon in the field of logistics have raised a question that needs to be answered. The question in discussion is regarding the process that had been adopted by the discussed firm to keep its logistics service fresh and effective at the same instance. The answer to the above discussed answer is the four step of development process. The discussed development process steps of the firm have been detailed in the following points.

1. Identification of the inefficiencies. Amazon has always considered the future aspect and as part of it, they have developed itself to be over the time to cope up with the changing nature of the market and the perception of its consumers. The first step towards attaining the discussed measure is the identification of the inefficiencies in the logistics process of the firm (Yu et al., 2016). The above statement does not rely on the idea that there are flaws in the logistic approach on the firm but instead supports the idea that the changing time demands the change of approach for a high level of satisfaction. If the changes are not indulged in the process, then it leads to development of inefficiencies. So, to mitigate the discussed threat the firm has designated its R&D team to identify the inefficiencies in the logistic process of the firm (Liu & Hong, 2016). It may be due to internal factors or may even be due to changing time. The identification of the inefficiencies enables the firm to work towards determination of the solutions for mitigating the challenges.
2. Development of technological solution. The discussion above has made it evident that Amazon is one of those firms who greatly rely on technology for resolution of all its issues. Hence, when the R&D team identified any inefficiency, the first approach adopted by the firm is to look technological solution (Lierow, Janssen & D’Inca, 2016). Two of the companies that have established themselves as the most innovative firms are Tesla and Amazon and both the firms are technology driven. Furthermore, both the firms believe in in-house technologies (Daugherty, Bolumole & Grawe, 2018). One of the prime example of the technology driven solutions is the development of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is now the biggest vendor of cloud services that accounts for over 35% of market share. It was developed for the internal inefficiencies of the firm and was later promoted to a global context. Similarly, in case of the logistics the firm faced challenges and hence, they approached technology for solution. The inefficiency in discussion is the locating of addresses in India and similar country and the firm found solution in the form of AI and Machine learning (Huang, 2015). They inducted the discussed technology in the form of mobile application that have greatly improved their logistics in the discussed situation.
3. Scaling of the solution into the platform. The identification of inefficiency leads to the development of the technological solution is not the end to the development process of the firm as they take further steps to ensure the success of the adopted solution. The first objective that they adopt to ensure the success is to present the solution in the simplest form to the end-users (Hong et al., 2018). To attain the discussed objective, the firm, scale the technological solution in a platform. In case of the logistic challenge of identifying the addresses, the technological solution was the introduction of the AI and machine learning. However, the end-users that is the logistic associates were unable to use the technologies directly due to limited skills and knowledge. Hence, the company scaled the technology in the form of mobile application which was end-user friendly and offered solution to the inefficiency (Chiu et al., 2017). The introduction of AI and Machine learning is not the first instance when the firm had attempted the trick. The company had earlier taken similar measures which is evident from the supply chain process of the firm. The supply chain action starts from the product development followed by inbound shipping, warehousing, inventory management, e-commerce sales, payment, pick-n-pick and fulfilment & return (Carter, Kosmol & Kaufmann, 2017). The sequence discussed above presents the summary of the supply chain and is a representation of the different steps where the firm had made technological changes to cope up with inefficiency and all the solution are scaled into a platform.
4. Offering the platform as a solution to third parties. Amazon had one of the best logistics mind and the most prominent reason for the discussed reason can be supported by the fact that the firm determines approaches to earn profit from its own inefficiencies. The company believes in the ideology that if the firm is facing an inefficiency other firms may face it too and they may be looking for solution (Christopher, 2016). Hence, the first step that the firm adopts is to identify the inefficiency and post identification the firm develops solution which it scales into a platform mitigating its problem. However, the firm does not let go of the idea and leverages it by selling or renting the solution to other needful.  The selling and renting of the solution benefits the logistics of the firm as the firm uses its own logistic solution to deliver the solution.

The discussion above has offered an insight into the approach, strategy and model that is pursued by the firm in discussion. The key identification from the discussion are the factors that make Amazon unique from its competitors. Some of the primary factors have been listed below:

1. Motivation of continuous improvement. The discussion above has made it evident that the reason for the success and sustainability of the firm is its attitude of accepting change and improving it to attain high level. The firm has dedicated R&D team that is designated with the responsibility of identifying change and propose solution. To attain the objective in discussion the firm identify inefficiencies and propose solutions that are technological in nature and feasible at the same instance. The discussed approach of the firm to look for inefficiency and improve it has offered the firm with a chance of to pursue continuous improvement process and sustain along with it.
2. Foreseeing is another one of the prominent factors that have enabled the firm to sustain and emerge as the biggest corporate agency in the world. The firm takes consideration of the future challenges and consequences along with the potential opportunities that can be leveraged. The foreseeing helps the firm to mitigate any threat to its sustainability before the threat becomes dire and even enables them to leverage the solution of the threat to develop opportunity which is evident from the case of AWS and the case of logistic.
3. In-house solutions development attitude of the firm has also proved to be the most prominent aspect that is reflecting towards its unique and creative approach that is making it a global leader. The fir develops in-house solutions and post completion of its use the firm makes the solution available for third party businesses which adds to its value and even develops an opportunity for its logistics section.
4. Technological adoption is also one of the primary factors that has contributed towards the success of the firm. The technological adoption such as AI and machine learning for determining the location is one of the most creative ideas and it is paying well for the firm and its logistics services.
5. Customer centric nature is another one of the biggest factor that have enabled the firm to attain the position that it is entertaining. The firm understood that the customer hates waiting and hence, the firm developed a logistic that is efficient and fast at the same instance. Hence, the firm expanded its logistic infrastructure and even developed fulfilment centres that offers ease of logistics along with efficiency and effectiveness.
6. Assistance for the sellers. The point above has made it evident that Amazon is not only concerned with the consumers but takes adequate care of its sellers as well. The decision of Amazon is adequate because, it is aware of the fact that without sellers the firm will not be able to satisfy its customers which will impact the sustainability of the firm. Hence, to mitigate the discussed risk, the firm have dedicated one of its logistics department for the sellers. the discussed logistics section is integrated with the marketing team of the firm. The logistics of the firm along with the marketing team visits small and medium products manufacturer and collects product pictures and details so that they can promote the product on their platform and earn revenue against it. Furthermore, it offers the firm with the advantage of having a loyal seller that will benefit the firm to attain a long term sustainability. The discussed use of logistics is one of the most promising use of logistics and is setting example for others to follow.
7. Research and development is prominently the most prominent factor that enables the impact of Amazon and its logistics. The firm has established its R&D to support its current operations and develop plans that will assist the firm to ensure that the position of competitive leader that it is entertaining stays intact. The research in the field of logistics have made the Amazon logistic as the prime example of logistics for different firms who are pursuing the footstep of the discussed firm. The Amazon prime and Amazon Prime Now are the most prominent examples of providing logistic services which is offering customer satisfaction and is also saving the organisational resources because of the establishment of the fulfilment centres.  

Hence, in summary it would be justified to state that the firm has established itself as a prime example of logistics services and should be a case that should be assessed by the logistic service providers for a better output. The factors that have been identified can be taken into consideration by the logistic firms to improve on their operations and attain a path of sustainability. So, Amazon is the prime example of the how to gain leadership and maintain the position of leadership in the logistic market.

References

Carter, C. R., Kosmol, T., & Kaufmann, L. (2017). Toward a supply chain practice view. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 53(1), 114-122.

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