The coordination of E-commerce and Logistics : A case study of Amazon.com  

Abstract:

With the further promotion and application of e-commerce, logistics is becoming necessary. Logistics and the importance of e-commerce are more and more getting people’s attention, but what is the relationship between e-commerce and logistics still needs to be explored.

The purposes of thesis are to research the relationship between e-commerce and logistics in B2C (business to consumer) companies. The aims of the thesis are threefold. Firstly, describe the coordination mechanism between e-commerce and logistics in general and particularly in Amazon.com. Secondly, find out the strengths and shortcoming of logistic when the company is developing e-commerce in general. Thirdly, In general, we focus on finding out the way to coordinate logistic in developing e-commerce, and how the logistic helps companies to develop e-commerce.

The qualitative research method is used in our thesis in order to fulfill our purposes. It is a case study of Amazon China as the study subject. We analyzed the data, collected from the interview and documentation. There are certain limitations for our thesis: the interviewees were working, and they only had one hour for us to make the interview. Because of the time limitation, we could not get satisfactory and detailed information from them. So we collected some secondary data in order to support our thesis. In order to get much specific data i.e. more logistics information about logistics in Amazon, we phoned the customer service and in order to get some detail data.

After the research, we found if e-commerce and logistics go hand in hand and converge; they create a unique mechanism which can help the business and market.