What impact does e-commerce have on logistics?

1. Influence on the concept of logistics. When e-commerce is regarded as a business competitive environment, its influence on logistics concept can be understood from the following aspects: First, the information in the logistics system has become the environmental basis for the operation of the whole supply chain. Network is the platform, supply chain is the main body, and e-commerce is the means. Information environment plays a controlling and leading role in supply chain integration. Second, the market competition of enterprises will be more manifested as the competition of enterprise alliances represented by external networks. In other words, the direct participants in online competition will gradually decrease. More enterprises will take advantage of the professional comparative advantages of their goods or services to participate in the logistics system with division of labor and cooperation led by the core enterprises-either with brand advantages or knowledge management advantages-to build an integrated supply chain in a wider scope and serve as a virtual entity support system for the core enterprises. The possibility of unlimited expansion of supply chain system in vertical and horizontal directions will put forward a broader alliance or deeper specialization for enterprises. Obviously, within the framework of e-commerce, alliance and specialization are mutually external and unified in the system of logistics integration. Third, the advantage of market competition will no longer be how much material resources an enterprise has, but how much social resources can be mobilized, coordinated and finally integrated to enhance its market competitiveness. Therefore, the competition of enterprises will be the competition of information alliance or knowledge alliance based on logistics system. The management of logistics system has also changed from the management of tangible assets inventory to the management of intangible assets information or knowledge. Fourthly, the basic technical and economic problems faced by logistics system are how to effectively allocate information resources among supply chain members, so as to make the whole system have the highest customer service level, that is, to pursue the lowest total logistics cost and provide personalized services to customers. Fifth, the logistics system has changed from supply-driven to demand-driven. When all aspects of logistics system are supported by network technology, customers' availability of products will be greatly improved. At the same time, it will also greatly reduce costs in all functional links of the logistics system, such as reducing procurement costs, reducing inventory costs, shortening product development cycle, providing effective services to customers, reducing sales and marketing costs, and increasing sales opportunities. 2. Impact on the structure of logistics system. The influence of e-commerce on the structure of logistics system is mainly manifested in the following aspects: First, because online customers can directly face manufacturers and get personalized service, wholesalers, retailers and other intermediaries in traditional logistics channels will gradually talk about it, but regional sales agents will be entrusted by manufacturers as a direct extension of their product marketing and service functions, and gradually strengthen their position in channels and regional markets. Secondly, due to the contrast between the "zero distance" feature of online time and space and the real world, customers' psychological expectation of product availability increases, which leads to greater pressure on the delivery speed of enterprises. Therefore, the layout, structure and tasks of ports, stations, warehouses, distribution centers, transportation lines and other facilities in the logistics system will face major adjustments. For example, after 1988 adopted the MRP system of EDI, Eunice reduced its five distribution centers and 14 auxiliary warehouse in Europe to 1 distribution center. After enterprises keep some regional warehouses, more warehouses will be transformed into distribution centers. With the increasing inventory control ability, the total number of warehouses in the logistics system will decrease. With the gradual relaxation of transportation management policies, more independent carriers will provide more specialized distribution services for enterprises. The service radius of distribution will also increase. Thirdly, due to the immediacy of information sharing, manufacturers may allocate resources on a global scale, so their organizational structure will tend to be decentralized and gradually virtualized. Of course, this is mainly those enterprises with brands whose products have achieved functional modularity and quality standardization in technology. Fourth, large-scale telecom infrastructure construction will make the logistics system of tangible products that can be directly transmitted on the Internet invisible. Such products mainly include books, newspapers, music, software and so on. That is, the logistics system of digital products will gradually overlap with the network system and will eventually be replaced by the network system. 3. Impact on customer service. First, it is required to ensure the real-time interaction between enterprises and customers on the customer consulting service interface. The design of the homepage of the website should not only publicize the enterprise and introduce the products, but also communicate with customers on product design, quality, packaging, modification, delivery conditions and after-sales service, so as to help customers draw up the supply plan of the products and help them place orders. This requires the real-time information support of every functional link in the logistics system. The second is to require personalized customer service. Only when the response of enterprises to customers' needs is personalized and symmetrical can enterprises get more business opportunities. Therefore, first of all, the homepage design of enterprise websites is required to be personalized. In addition to the personalized characteristics of visual sense, the most important thing is that the structural design of the homepage of the website should be aimed at specific customer groups. There is a principle to grasp here, that is, "all new clothes are not necessarily beautiful." Therefore, the general principles and methods of customer segmentation and market segmentation in traditional marketing are still the basic basis for enterprises to design and change the homepage of websites. Second, the products or services operated by enterprises are required to be personalized. Specialized management is still the top priority of enterprise competition and development under the network economy environment. Only by professional management can enterprises highlight their comparative advantages in resource allocation and provide guarantee for providing customers with more detailed, comprehensive and personalized services. Similarly, according to the general principle of supply chain value-added services, logistics services are divided into basic categories and value-added categories. It will be suitable for different service marketing combinations according to the changes of customer needs. Third, it requires enterprises to provide personalized customer tracking services. The individuation of customer demand in the network era increases the dispersion of market forecast, so it is found that the statistical characteristics of customer personalized service demand will mainly depend on the collection, statistics, analysis and tracking of customer data. Although there is no technical difficulty, it involves many aspects such as culture, psychology and law, so it is a very challenging job to establish customer files and track services. 4. Impact on material procurement. Theoretically, enterprises have unlimited selectivity in finding suitable suppliers online. This possibility of unlimited choice will lead to the intensification of market competition and bring the benefits of lower supply prices. However, all enterprises know that frequent replacement of suppliers will increase the cost of qualification certification and face greater procurement risks. Therefore, from the supplier's point of view, as an inevitable countermeasure to deal with competition, it is to actively seek to establish a stable channel relationship with manufacturers and form a deeper strategic alliance with them in technology or management or service. Similarly, manufacturers will seek to establish an integrated supply chain with qualified suppliers from the concept of logistics. With the exchange of interests, information resources will be shared between manufacturers and suppliers on a larger scale and at a deeper level. For example, LOF company reduced its product carriers from 534 to 2 after establishing the information sharing mechanism: a logistics service company arranged all freight matters for it; Another logistics company provides third-party payment service for it, which is responsible for processing billing information electronically, which can not only reduce the freight of 500,000 US dollars, but also eliminate 70,000 paperwork. In fact, e-commerce reduces the cost of material procurement mainly in shortening the loan booking cycle, reducing paperwork and documents, reducing errors and lowering prices. Therefore, the infinite selectivity of virtual space will be covered by the limited logistics system in the real market, namely integrated supply chain. 5. Impact on inventory. It is generally believed that e-commerce can reduce inventory and save costs, because it increases the sensitivity of all links in the logistics system to market changes. Corresponding technical means have also changed from Kanban Management (JIT) and Material Requirements Planning (MRP) to decision-making systems based on rapid response of demand information, such as Distribution Requirements Planning (DPR), Reorder Planning (ROP) and Automatic Replenishment Planning (ARP). But from the logistics point of view, this is actually to rearrange the inventory in the supply chain with the help of information distribution. The total inventory in the supply chain decreases, but the structure will move along the supply chain to downstream enterprises. That is, the dealer's inventory will be transferred to the manufacturer, the manufacturer's inventory will be transferred to the supplier, the inventory of finished products will become the inventory of parts, and the inventory of parts will become the inventory of raw materials. Because the value of inventory is gradually decreasing downstream along the supply chain, this leads to a new problem: how to share the relatively large economic benefits brought by the decrease of inventory in upstream enterprises with downstream enterprises. Supply chain integration should share not only information, but also benefits. For example, Nike, the most famous virtual enterprise, is going to switch to electronic data interchange (BDl) to contact its suppliers from this year, order the styles, colors and quantities of ready-made clothes directly in EDI, and shorten the loan delivery period to 3-4 months. At the same time, the weaving factory that supplies cloth is required to report the newly developed cloth samples to the American head office first, and then the designer chooses the appropriate cloth design as the garment style, and then orders it to the garment manufacturer for production; Moreover, the fabrics used by clothing manufacturers must also be produced by weaving factories approved by Nike. In this way, the weaving factory must plan new products in advance for Nike to choose and buy. However, because the cloth is specified by the buyer, the time for the buyer to order the cloth for the clothing manufacturer is shortened, and the delivery time of the clothing manufacturer is shortened from 180 days to 120 days or even 90 days. Obviously, Nike's inventory pressure has been reduced, but in order to improve the supply rate of products, clothing manufacturers must put forward the requirements of fast delivery to weaving factories. At this time, the weaving factory will either increase the inventory of basic raw materials or invest to expand its new product development capacity. 6. Impact on traffic. Under the condition of e-commerce, speed has become the most important means of competition. In order to improve the availability of products to customers, transportation will be decisive when determining the layout of facilities such as warehouses. Due to the complexity of transportation activities, the basic requirements for enjoying transportation information are the standardization of transportation document format and electronic transmission. Because the basic EDI standard is difficult to adapt to different transportation service requirements and easy to be imitated, it cannot be used as a competitive advantage of logistics. Therefore, it is necessary to develop special EDI capabilities in the logistics system in order to obtain comprehensive strategic advantages. Dedicated EDI capability is actually to develop a value-added network (VAN) based on the supply chain, which is equivalent to the standard password used in the supply chain. By managing transactions, translating communication standards and reducing the number of communication links, the supply chain can be increased, thus establishing a stable customized channel relationship among logistics alliance enterprises. In order to realize the EDI one-vote system of transport documents (mainly freight bills of lading, freight manifests and freight bills), realize the tracking and monitoring of the whole freight process and the overall arrangement of return freight, the logistics system will be required to make early development and investment in related communication facilities and information processing systems, such as electronic customs clearance, bar code technology, online freight information system and satellite tracking system.