The Rise of Crowd Logistics: A New Way to Co‐Create Logistics Value

• Date: 01 December 2017
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jbl.12164

The Rise of Crowd Logistics: A New Way to Co-Create Logistics

Value

Valentina Carbone

1

, Aur

elien Rouquet

2

, and Christine Roussat

3

1

ESCP Europe

2

NEOMA Business School

3

Clermont-Auvergne University & CRET-LOG

Patterned on crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, a new crowd practice has emerged in recent years: crowd logistics. In this paper, we propose

afirst conceptualization of this growing phenomenon. Crowd logistics is a novel way of providing logistics services that taps into the dor-

mant logistics resources and capabilities of individuals, using mobile applications and web-based platforms. Although crowd logistics has been

widely discussed in the business world, it has not yet been the subject of any academic publication. Following an exploratory case study

approach, we review the websites of 57 crowd logistics initiatives around the world and highlight the main distinctive characteristics of crowd

logistics, as compared to traditional business logistics. We introduce a segmented analysis in which crowd logistics solutions are classified

according to four types of service offered. Finally, we introduce six theoretical propositions on the future development of crowd logistics. At a

theoretical level, our findings contribute to enriching the service-dominant logic perspective in the logistics field by conceptualizing the crowd

as a co-creator of logistics value. At a managerial level, our findings contribute to identifying which types of crowd logistics services are more

likely to threaten or disrupt traditional business.

Keywords: crowd practices; consumer logistics; sharing economy; logistics service providers; value co-creation

INTRODUCTION

One of the numerous outcomes of the digital revolution on our

“old”economy is the recent rise of “crowdsourcing”initiatives:

GoFundMe, Wikipedia, etc. Activities that were once handled by

afirm and its designated agents such as employees can now be

entrusted to the multitude of ordinary people, the “crowd”of

individuals (Howe 2006). Management research has hitherto

focused on two types of crowd practices: first, crowdfunding

(Ordanini et al. 2011; Belleflamme et al. 2014), which aims to

tap into the financial resources of the crowd in order to finance

projects; and second, crowd innovation (Collm and Schedler

2012; Boudreau and Lakhani 2013), which aims to tap into the

intellectual resources of the crowd for the purpose of innovation.

In addition to financial and intellectual resources, the crowd

also possesses logistics resources: strong arms to move furniture,

physical assets such as garages to store merchandise and vehicles

to transport goods. Often left idle and underutilized, these

resources may be activated when needed to provide logistics ser-

vices. This opportunity is currently being exploited by a host of

start-ups that are appearing all over the planet. In the United

States, for example, Deliv enlists private individuals to provide

faster and cheaper delivery services to customers of retail stores.

In the United Kingdom, Storenextdoor seeks to make use of the

unoccupied garages and basements of individuals by renting

them out, thus providing local storage options at a low price.

Newcomers are attracted by this business potential. After taking

on the taxi industry, Uber is now entering logistics markets to

offer new services: UberEATS for food deliveries and

UberRUSH offering same-day delivery to online shoppers (in

New York, San Francisco and Chicago).

Bearing in mind the dearth of research on this topic, our pur-

pose is to develop an initial conceptual approach to these initia-

tives, which we term “crowd logistics,”meant as “initiatives that

tap into the logistical resources of the crowd to perform logistics

services.”This article is structured in six sections. The first sec-

tion reviews the (scarce) literature that relates to crowd logistics.

The second section presents our methodology, which is based on

the study of 57 cases of emergent crowd logistics initiatives. The

third section highlights the main differences between crowd

logistics and traditional business logistics. The fourth section

introduces a typology of the different crowd logistics initiatives,

based on the logistics services offered (storage, local delivery,

freight shipping, or freight forwarding). The fifth section shows

how our results contribute to enriching the service-dominant

logic perspective in the logistics field (Lusch et al. 2014) and

introduces six theoretical propositions on the future development

of crowd logistics. The sixth section discusses the potential

impacts of crowd logistics on traditional businesses and argues

that crowd local delivery is likely to have the strongest impact in

the future. Finally, the conclusion identifies the limitations of our

article and opens several avenues for future research.

CROWD LOGISTICS: AN UNDEREXPLORED CROWD

PRACTICE

Crowdsourcing, a neologism formed from the words “crowd”

and “outsourcing,”was initially popularized by Howe (2006). It

refers to the outsourcing by a firm of some activities to the

crowd. The phenomenon encompasses “a highly varied group of

approaches that share one obvious attribute in common: they all

depend on some contributors from the crowd. But the nature of

those contributions can differ tremendously”(Howe 2008, 280).

Corresponding author:

Aur

elien Rouquet, NEOMA Business School, Reims, France;

E-mail: aurelien.rouquet@neoma-bs.fr

Journal of Business Logistics, 2017, 38(4): 238–252 doi: 10.1111/jbl.12164

© Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals