Crowdsourced delivery: A review of platforms and academic literature

Crowdsourced delivery systems have created many new industry last-mile delivery solutions and have received some attention in the academic literature. In this review paper, we analyze the current industry status of this emergent concept and provide a classification of available platforms based on their matching mechanisms, target markets and compensation schemes. We review the operations research (OR) literature explicitly addressing this topic and assess the realism of the assumptions, and applicability to real-world applications. We also compare the management decisions within crowdsourced delivery systems to well-studied OR problems in the literature, and pinpoint new challenges that arise in the context of crowdsourced delivery. The purpose of this paper is to identify key elements of such systems that distinguish them from other transportation systems, to ultimately shed light on some promising research directions. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This review paper analyzes the current industry status of crowdsourced delivery systems, provides a classification of platforms, evaluates the realism of assumptions in the literature, and identifies new challenges in management decisions. By studying key elements of such systems, it sheds light on promising research directions for the future.