Personal shopper systems in last-mile logistics

This paper explores the logistics operations of instant grocery delivery services. Therefore, we introduce the instant delivery problem (IDP) to replicate and examine two widely adopted strategies in the rapid delivery market: the personal shopper system (PSS) and the inventory owned delivery (IOD) system. In the PSS, couriers visit affiliated brick- and-mortar stores in the delivery area to pick up and purchase ordered products and then deliver them to customers. In the IOD system, couriers collect products from a single distribution center, or so-called dark store, in which the platform manages the inventory. Even though a PSS strategy is asset light because of the utilization of existing retailers in the area, maintaining a good level of on-time instant deliveries with the PSS is more complex than with IOD. This is because the PSS requires deciding which store to purchase ordered goods from, and picking and shopping at stores needs to be considered in the real-time decision process. We propose a tailored rolling horizon framework that utilizes column generation to browse updated delivery plans for arriving customer orders. Computational studies both in real life–inspired settings and in case studies on selected urban areas show that the PSS is a highly competitive strategy compared with IOD, particularly when dealing with small-sized customer orders. We observe that the performance of the PSS is robust when varying the delivery service time frame. The case studies also suggest that the PSS becomes even more competitive in areas where the retail store density is high

The impact of WI-FI as a complementary service on customers' likelihood to return and purchase intentions in South African townships

A Masters Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Commerce in the faculty of Commerce, Law and Management August, 2016Online activity through the Internet and mobile phones has dramatically increased over the last five years in South Africa (Nyirenda-Jere & Tesfaye , 2015). Lower costs for Internet and mobile phones are the main reasons for more and more people being connected (Price Waterhouse Cooper South Africa, 2012). But discrepancies exist, namely between the people who are connected and those who are not. This discrepancy is referred to as the digital divide and contributing factors towards it include income, education, age and other factors which were discussed in this paper (Nievhaves, Gorbacheva & Plattfaut, 2012). Free Wi-Fi is one of the solutions to bridge the digital divide to a certain extent and it is also a very valuable tool to marketers and business owners. This research study was aimed at understanding the impact of free Wi-Fi on consumers’ purchase intentions and likelihood to return in townships in South Africa. People in townships are an important group to analyse, because of the millions of inhabitants. Infrastructure in terms of the Internet is not as good as the infrastructure standards in suburbs or in the city. The purpose of the study was to find out the impact of free Wi-Fi on the likelihood of customers to return and their likelihood to purchase something at a location where free Wi-Fi is offered. For the purpose of this research a quantitative approach was used to investigate the impact of free Wi-Fi and factors leading to return and intention to conduct purchases. Non-probability sampling was used in the form of convenience sampling. A self-administered questionnaire was developed to investigate behaviour. Four hundred questionnaires were distributed to people living in Soweto. The analysis indicated that the four access variables, namely - material, mental, usage and skills access - have an influence on the intention to use free Wi-Fi which, in turn, has an influence on the likelihood to return or purchase something. Implications for marketers and businesses is: the marketers have to consider the digital divide when marketing to consumers in South Africa and that offering free Wi-Fi at a commercial place has positive implications for both customers and businesses.MT201

Trucks, Traffic, and Timely Transport: A Regional Freight Logistics Profile

This report justifies and designs a comprehensive tool for describing intraurban trucking, which is the bulk of truck movement in an urban area but typically is unexamined in regional transportation planning. We begin by reviewing literature describing the characteristics and policy issues bearing on freight. We extract from that literature a structure for describing those policy issues, and then go on to design a series of map displays and quantitative measures that provide a linkage between the characteristics of local delivery trucking and the public policy issues that stem from and influence these characteristics. The Regional Freight Logistics Profile (RFLP) emerges as an easy-to-understand yet comprehensive description of urban trucking that stimulates a more constructive dialog among government transportation leaders, shippers, truckers, and the general public. The design balances coverage of the variety of public and business concerns relative to freight against the costs and other practicalities of collecting data. To overcome reluctance on the part of private companies to reveal performance information, we have designed an institutional approach to gathering truck fleet performance data that does not compromise confidential performance data from competing carriers and shippers. We recommend that metropolitan planning organizations, as well as state and federal freight mobility offices with responsibility for technical assistance to MPOs, review the RFLP design for potential adaptation and adoption

The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape

In most industrialized countries, car travel per person has peaked and the automobile regime is showing considering signs of instability. As cities across the globe venture to find the best ways to allow people to get around amidst technological and other changes, many forces are taking hold — all of which suggest a new transport landscape. Our roadmap describes why this landscape is taking shape and prescribes policies informed by contextual awareness, clear thinking, and flexibility

Rhetorical constructions of tipped worker wages: A comparative analysis of restaurant opportunities centers United\u27s and National Restaurant Association\u27s tipping arguments

This thesis highlights the distinct methods of persuasion employed by the National Restaurant Association and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United in their arguments related to tipping. Both parties limit the strength of their arguments by ignoring the opposition\u27s case, selecting instead facts and evidence that construct a persuasive, yet incomplete picture of tipped wages, the tipped worker, and the restaurants that employ these workers. I propose a focus on dialogic interaction which I define as the obligation of the rhetor to respond to available counter-claims, to be open to questioning, and to be truthful. Reclaiming dialogic interaction between parties and will improve the quality of the individual arguments and the debate overall. It will point toward a more complete understanding of the data, arguments, and players involved in framing the issue of restaurant worker wages

Adoption and Resistance of Service Innovations by Travelers in the Sharing Economy

abstract: This dissertation examines travelers’ innovation adoption and repurchase behaviors in the sharing economy. The central question is to what extent the tourism industry embraces service innovations in the sharing economy. Predicated upon behavioral reasoning theory, this research makes a contribution to the tourism study and diffusion of innovation literature, by exploring the influence of travelers’ reasonings in the innovation decision process. The dissertation follows a two-study format. The analysis contextualizes reasons for and against adoption, by incorporating appropriate constructs relevant to service innovations in social dining services (Study 1) and ride-sharing services (Study 2). An exploratory mixed methods approach is taken in both studies. The survey data and the semi-structured interviews are used to identify the context-specific reasons for and against adoption. And, a series of statistical analyses are employed to examine how reasonings influence intentions to adopt social dining services (Study 1) and intentions to repurchase ride-sharing services for the next trip (Study 2). The main results suggest that both reasons for and reasons against adoption have countervailing influences in the psychological processing, supporting the validity of the research models. The findings also reveal that different psychological paths in travelers’ adoption and repurchase intentions. In Study 1, the trustworthiness of service providers attenuates the reasons against adoption and enhances the likelihood of adopting social dining services in the pre-adoption stage. In Study 2, attitude strength functions as an additional construct, which mediates travelers’ attitudes and ultimately intentions to repurchase ride-sharing services for the next trip in the post-adoption stage. By developing and testing a framework comprising a set of consumers’ beliefs, reasonings for adoption and resistance, attitudes towards adoption, and behavioral responses to the sharing economy, the insights gleaned from this research allow practical recommendations to be made for service providers, platform providers, and policy makers in the tourism industry.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Community Resources and Development 201

Consumer decision making in restaurant selection

The aim of this study was to investigate consumers’ decision of selecting a restaurant for leisure. It was based on research carried out in the South East of the UK. In line with the cognitive paradigm the importance of attributes was approached from the theoretical perspective of utility theory in which consumers pursue maximisation of benefits from the service which they are evaluating. This study follows a sequential mixed methods approach. It consists of a qualitative stage followed by a quantitative stage, each one adhering to the precepts of their own paradigms. The qualitative stage was based on data collected through six focus groups of four to six respondents. An interview guide was used in semi-structured settings and data was analysed using applied thematic analysis. The second stage employed an online survey generating quantitative data from 376 respondents. The theme of ‘eating out occasion’, such as a romantic dinner, was a key element of the decision-making process. This thesis presents a framework for examining the different stages of the decision using the stylised Engels, Kollat and Blackwell (EKB) model (Tuan-Phan and Higgins, 2005). Its stages delve into the influence of emotions, motivations and the consumer’s regulatory focus in the decision. The methodological design with the possibility of selecting attributes, emerging from the qualitative stage, offers a contribution to the use of conjoint analysis for complex decisions. The study also proposes a new typology of restaurant attributes, with seven categories influencing perceived consumer value. The study’s findings further indicate that price is a factor influencing the expectations from the other attributes. The study considers a number of implications for the industry, such as, the importance of service and consumers’ willingness to pay more for a service that is friendly, welcoming and attentive. It also suggests many areas for further research

Online Algorithms for Dynamic Resource Allocation Problems

Dynamic resource allocation problems are everywhere. Airlines reserve flight seats for those who purchase flight tickets. Healthcare facilities reserve appointment slots for patients who request them. Freight carriers such as motor carriers, railroad companies, and shipping companies pack containers with loads from specific origins to destinations. We focus on optimizing such allocation problems where resources need to be assigned to customers in real time. These problems are particularly difficult to solve because they depend on random external information that unfolds gradually over time, and the number of potential solutions is overwhelming to search through by conventional methods. In this dissertation, we propose viable allocation algorithms for industrial use, by fully leveraging data and technology to produce gains in efficiency, productivity, and usability of new systems. The first chapter presents a summary of major methodologies used in modeling and algorithm design, and how the methodologies are driven by the size of accessible data. Chapters 2 to 5 present genuine research results of resource allocation problems that are based on Wang and Truong (2017); Wang et al. (2015); Stein et al. (2017); Wang et al. (2016). The algorithms and models cover problems in multiple industries, from a small clinic that aims to better utilize its expensive medical devices, to a technology giant that needs a cost-effective, distributed resource-allocation algorithm in order to maintain the relevance of its advertisements to hundreds of millions of consumers

Performing home: à la Turca foodscapes in London

The research at hand investigates how home is performed through foodscapes by focusing on the Turkish speaking communities in London. It is based on the premises that food has a strong connection to not just where home is, but how it manifests itself at different scales and registers of food activities in the ‘here and now’ of so-called migrant communities. Home is therefore taken as an act of dwelling that is both constitutive of and constituted by the specificities of the site of habitation. Based on Ingold’s conceptualisation of dwelling perspective, the research argues that the migrant skills deployed around food are trained and practiced in response to the environment of habitation (1993, 2000) as opposed to being imported as innate skills from the country of origin. Explored through the acts of eating, cooking, serving, sharing, celebrating and talking about food puissantly problematises the frameworks of host & guest migrants and home & host nations. Reflecting upon the constitution of home through food therefore has a double function: it liberates migrant homes from the geographical dominance of a past country where they are from and at the same time recognises the site-specific manifestations of their skills “within the current of their involved activity, in the specific relational contexts of their practical engagement with their surroundings” (Ingold 2000, p. 186). The economic, social, cultural and affective mobilisations of the members of Turkish Speaking Community in London display the dynamism and heterogeneity that is inherent to both food and home. The variety of the ways in which the ethnically and linguistically diverse members of this vaguely framed group relate to themselves, to each other, to the city and to the larger discourses of community and nation are explored in this research through performative and multi-sited ethnographic tools. From shopping together with the participants for the dinner ingredients to formal interview settings, from cooking along to temporarily managing an eating out establishment, practicing with and within the contexts of the participants contributed to the knowledge formation for this research. Three interrelated yet distinct foodscape clusters emerged out of this research: Restaurants, British Kebab Awards and the households. The term foodscape here aims at encapsulating the multiscalar, interconnected, always in-the-making and at times inconsistent practices and discourses that emerge in each of these sites. Even though all ethnographic encounters took place in London, in a seemingly singular site, the research gained a multi-sited character due to the different power dynamics, ethnographic requirements, and different imaginaries offered by each of these clusters. These three registers, in their heterogeneity, show that home, looked especially through the lens of food, appears to be re-creative, generative, tactical, site-specific, and multifold series of dwelling acts, rather than being the geographical elsewhere of a migrant. By means of food, the migrant becomes the skillful dweller, and London becomes home