Solving the Last Mile Problem in E-Commerce

Valentina Britvina

1 a

, Nikita Glazkov

1 b

, Nadezhda Kolezneva

1 c

, Ekaterina Bobrova

2, 3

and Kirill Bobrov

Moscow Polytechnic University, 38, Bolshaya Semyonovskaya str., Moscow, Russia

Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1, Leninskie Gory, Moscow, Russia

Russian State Agrarian University, 49, Timiryazevskaya st., Moscow, Russia

Keywords: Pandemic, Delivery, Last Mile Problem, Geodata.

Abstract: Physical distancing and isolation measures used during COVID-19 have played a huge role in the

development of e-commerce. The increase in the number of online purchases around the world is forcing all

courier services to adapt to new delivery conditions. This article tells about a solution that can help to cope

with the problem of the last mile in Russia.

1 INTRODUCTION

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the fact that

people in the world have significantly limited any

interaction with one another. Voluntary social

distancing in order to avoid infection, as well as

strict state measures, have actually suspended, at

least temporarily, a significant share of traditional

retail trade.

2 THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

AND E-COMMERCE

In the United States of America (Advance Monthly

Sales For Retail And Food Services, May 2021),

retail sales and food sales in the period from

February to April 2020 decreased by 7.7% compared

to the same period in 2019. Nevertheless, sales of

any kind in online stores increased by 16% and

14.8%, respectively. In Europe, retail sales via the

Internet in April 2020 increased by 30% compared

to April 2019, while total retail sales decreased by

17.9%. As a result, the transition from retail to e-

commerce will be significant in different countries.

For example, while the share of e-commerce in total

retail trade in the United States increased slowly

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7056-144X

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0400-9849

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3048-2456

between the first quarter of 2018 and the first quarter

of 2020 (from 9.6% to 11.8%), it increased to 16.1%

between the first and second quarter of 2020. The

similar situation is observed in the UK, where the

share of e-commerce in retail increased from 17.3%

to 20.3% over the period from the first quarter of

2018 to the first quarter of 2020, and then

significantly increased to 31.3% over the period

from the first to the second quarter of 2020. Similar

changes are observed in other regions, including

China (Total Retail Sales of Consumer Goods

Achieve Positive Growth in August 2020), where

the share of online purchases in the total volume of

accumulated retail sales over the period from

January to August 2020 reached 24.6%, compared

with 19.4% in August 2019 and 17.3% in August

2018.

Although official statistics are not available for

most other countries, estimations show that in the

first half of 2020, online orders increased in several

regions, including Europe, North America and the

Asia-Pacific region (Javier LOPEZ-GONZALEZ,

Silvia SORESCU: Connecting Businesses and

Consumers During COVID-19: Trade in Parcels).

For the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, e-

commerce had already increased significantly in the

first quarter of 2020, while in Europe and North

America growth occurred later, namely after several

countries followed the example of Italy and

introduced restrictive measures. The fact that

requests to Google for the delivery of goods almost

doubled in some countries before the actual

Britvina, V., Glazkov, N., Kolezneva, N., Bobrova, E. and Bobrov, K.

Solving the Last Mile Problem in E-Commerce.

In Proceedings of the II International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference "Information Technologies and Intelligent Decision Making Systems" (ITIDMS-II 2021), pages 22-27

ISBN: 978-989-758-541-8

restrictive measures were introduced (for example,

USA, the UK) illustrates the close relationship

between changes in consumers' behaviour, their

expectations and government actions.

Figure 1, a: Share of e-commerce in total retail sales,

United Kingdom and United States (2018-2020).

Figure 1.b: Retail turnover, year-on-year change,EU-27

(July 2019-20).

(US Census Bureau, Monthly Retail Trade; Internet sales

as a percentage of total retail sales (ratio) (%); Turnover

and volume of sales in wholesale and retail trade -

monthly data).

Figure 2: Statistics for the query "delivery" in the Google

search engine in different countries of the world (January

2020 - April 2020).

3 THE LAST MILE PROBLEM IN

DELIVERY PROCESS

The number of consumers shopping online is

growing along with the demand for fast and free

delivery of goods. Thus, in order to remain

competitive, e-commerce companies are constantly

looking for ways to increase efficiency and reduce

costs to improve their logistics. The main player in

this movement is the process of the so-called “last

mile”.

In other words, in order for a company to survive

in the modern market, it must find ways to increase

efficiency primarily in this area.

The last mile is the final stage of the delivery

chain, and its most important part, because that's

when the goods are delivered to the final destination,

to the customer.

Customers want their goods to be delivered

quickly and for free — or at least for a very small

fee. However, the last mile is also the most difficult

and expensive part of logistics, which is quite a big

problem for online stores. The last mile is a large

part of the total cost of delivery. With e-commerce

giant Amazon delivering products in just two hours

now, companies are looking for ways to deliver their

own products as quickly as possible to keep their

customers happy and loyal.

Figure 3: Biggest challenge for logistics providers in last

mile (The Last mile Logistics whitepaper. The

Iconomization of the last mile // Localz, 2018.).

Companies know that they need to adapt to

survive. This often means reducing the additional

costs, which are about 25% of the price on average

(Kees Jacobs, Shannon Warner, Marc Rietra,

Lindsey Mazza, Jerome Buvat, Amol Khadikar,

Sumit Cherian, Yashwardhan Khemk: “The last-

mile delivery challenge: Giving retail and consumer

product customers a superior delivery experience

without impacting profitability”.), to meet consumer

demand, and this number only increases as

inefficiency becomes more and more expensive.

Thus, you can imagine the potential return on

investment in improvement, especially considering

that the number of deliveries in most industries

continues to grow rapidly.

Most often, the introduction of goods pick-up

services and the installation of postamates are used

Solving the Last Mile Problem in E-Commerce

to solve the problem of the last mile at present. This

eliminates some problems, shifting the responsibility

to consumers. This can also significantly reduce the

amount of time that couriers spend on the road, since

they only need to visit several selected pick-up

points, and not several residential addresses.

This saves time twice, since often when people

do not open the door to receive a parcel, it is

delivered to the nearest pick-up point for receiving

or re-attempt delivery the next day.

4 LIMITATIONS

But, unfortunately, in Russia, this solution to the

problem of the last mile has little possibility of

implementation at the moment. Pick-up points and

postamates are still very unevenly developed, for

example, according to open data from the Moscow

government, which we were able to analyze, the

percentage of penetration in the Moscow region is

56%, and for the Krasnoyarsk region it’s only 6%.

According to M.S. Logachev, the work process

of modern companies requires an IT infrastructure,

providing not only data transfer, but also the ability

to make decisions and perform various business

operations, that can be considered as a structural

approach to systematizing processes. (Logachev M

S, Voronin I V, Britvina V V, Tichtchenko S А and

Altoukhov A V 2020 Local Area Network

Monitoring: The Issue of Broadcast Storm.

International Journal of Advanced Trends in

Computer Science and Engineering 9 4216-4222)

5 A SOLUTION TO THE

PROBLEM OF THE LAST MILE

IN RUSSIA

To solve this problem, a web application was

developed, the main competitive advantage of which

is direct access between the courier and the client

without intermediaries in the form of a company.

Common thing for courier services is when a

customer has a problem, they are sent to the support

service of the company, which cannot solve the

problem promptly, which reduces the customer's

loyalty. Another advantage is the ability of

customers to share GPS coordinates for quick

adaptation of couriers to their movements, the

courier will be able to find out how far from the

place of delivery or dispatch the customer is before

heading to it. Also, if we take into account the fact

that the application is designed exclusively for

courier services that deliver documents and / or

small-sized cargo, it will allow the courier to see

how far away his current customers are on the map.

And if, for example, one of the customers is within

walking distance from the courier and is ready to

accept the order, then he can do it without waiting

for the courier to arrive at the place of delivery or

dispatch, which will increase the key performance

indicators of the courier.

After registration, the user sees the adaptation

screen, which immerses him in the application.

When a user launches an application for the first

time, the adaptation process increases its value and

provides instructions that highlight key advantages

and functions. Next, the user places an order through

the application, choosing a convenient time for its

delivery and dispatch. Also, when placing an order,

the customer can choose to enable or disable the

geolocation tracking function. The courier also

monitors the customer's location before delivery to

optimize routes.

The latest web development technologies were

used, and we divide them into the following groups

while creating the application.

5.1 Interface Generation and Data

Processing

JavaScript / ES2020 is a multi-paradigm

programming language. Supports object-oriented,

imperative and functional styles. It is an

implementation of the ECMAScript specification.

SASS / SCSS is a CSS-based metalanguage

designed to increase the level of abstraction of CSS

code and simplify cascading style sheet files.

5.2 Organization of Development and

Uploading to the Server (Devops)

Docker is a software for automating the deployment

and management of applications in environments

with containerization support, application

containerizer.

Docker-compose is a tool designed to help define

and share multi-container (microservice

architecture) applications. With Compose, you can

create a YAML file to define your services and start

and stop whatever you want with a single command.

The big advantage of using Compose is that you can

define the application stack in a file, save it to the

root of the project repository (version control is now

supported), and easily let another user participate in

the project. Another user will only need to clone the

ITIDMS-II 2021 - II International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference "Information Technologies and Intelligent Decision Making Systems"

repository and start creating the application

(Logachev, M.S., Voronin, I.V., Britvina, V.V.,

Tichtchenko, S.А., Altoukhov, A.V., 2020.).

Webpack is an open source JavaScript module

builder. It parses the modules of the application,

creates a dependency graph, then assembles the

modules in the correct order into one or more

bundles, which can be referenced by the "index.php"

file. npm is the package manager included with

Node.js.

Nginx is an HTTP server and reverse proxy,

mail proxy, and general purpose TCP / UDP proxy.

5.3 Technical Debt

Git and GitHub is a distributed version control

system. The development is used, which includes

GitHub Flow and work with the branch system;

Prettier is a code formatting tool that aims to use

hard-coded rules for the formatting of programs. It

formats the code automatically, helping to maintain

consistency and accountability in the Git version

control system.

Eslint is a static code analysis tool for identifying

problematic patterns found in JavaScript code. Rules

in ESLint are configurable and custom rules can be

defined and loaded using packages such as

Eslint-plugin-prettier - Runs Prettier, typically

ESLint and reports differences as separate ESLint

issues.

Babel-eslint - Allows cross-platform Babel code.

5.4 Interface Design

Figma is a graphical online collaboration editor. You

can create a website prototype, an application

interface and discuss edits with colleagues in real

time in it.

Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor

developed and distributed by Adobe Systems.

Adobe Photoshop is a multifunctional graphics

editor developed and distributed by Adobe Systems.

5.5 Client Part

The front end is based on Vue.js technology

(Glazkov N. O., Belyaeva D. V., Designing an

Online Generator Of Math Tasks For Students Of

Secondary, Vocational And Higher Educational

Institutions. Journal of scientific publications

"Theory and practice of project education", No.

4(12)/2019), an open source JavaScript framework

for building user interfaces. Easily integrates into

projects using other JavaScript libraries, such as:

Vue-router is the official routing library for Vue.js.

It integrates deeply with Vue.js and makes it easy to

create SPA applications. Includes the following

features:

1. Nested routes / views;

2. Modular router configuration;

3. Access to route parameters, query,

wildcards;

4. Vue.js based view transition animation;

5. Convenient navigation control;

6. Automatic setting of the active CSS class

for links;

7. HTML5 history or hash modes, with auto-

switching in IE9;

8. Configurable page scrolling behavior;

Vuex - state management pattern + library for

Vue.js applications. It serves as a centralized

repository for all application components, with rules

to ensure that state can only be changed predictably;

Vuelidate - Simple and lightweight model-based

Vue.js validation;

Vue-clickaway - Reusable “clickaway” directive

for reusable Vue.js components to detect clicks

outside of component boundaries;

Vue I18n is a plugin for Vue.js

internationalization. It easily integrates some

localization features into your Vue.js application;

Chart.js - Simple and flexible JavaScript charts

for designers and developers.

5.6 Server Part

Node.js is a V8-based software platform that

transforms JavaScript from a highly specialized

language into a general-purpose language. Node.js is

used primarily on the server, serving as a web

server. Node.js allows you to connect other external

libraries and use technologies such as (Kees Jacobs,

Shannon Warner, Marc Rietra, Lindsey Mazza,

Jerome Buvat, Amol Khadikar, Sumit Cherian,

Yashwardhan Khemk, 2020.):

 Dotenv is a zero dependency module that

loads environment variables from a .env file

into process.env. Keeping configuration in an

environment separate from code is based on

the Twelve Factors application methodology;

 Compression - Node.js compression

middleware Debug is a tiny JavaScript

debugging utility modeled after the Node.js

core debugging technique. Works in Node.js

and web browsers;

 Express.js is a web application framework for

Node.js, released as free and open source

Solving the Last Mile Problem in E-Commerce

software under the MIT license. It is designed

for building web applications and APIs. This

is the de facto standard framework for

Node.js;

 Faker is a library that allows you to generate a

huge amount of fake data for testing the

system in the browser and Node.js;

 Sequelize is a promise-based Node.js ORM

for Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, and

Microsoft SQL Server. Has robust support for

transactions, relationships, active and lazy

loading, read replication, and more;

 PostgreSQL is a free object-relational database

management system. Available in

implementations for a variety of UNIX-like

platforms, including AIX, various BSD

systems, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, macOS,

Solaris / OpenSolaris, Tru64, QNX, and

Microsoft Windows (Zhichkin, K.A.,

Starikov, P.V., Zhichkina, L.N., Mamaev,

O.A., Artemova, E.I., Levochkina, N.A.,

2020.).

5.7 Client-Server Interaction

To organize client-server interaction, it was decided

to abandon the classic use of RESTful APIs in favor

of using GraphQL technology - an open source

query and manipulation language for APIs, as well

as a runtime environment for executing queries with

existing data. This method has the following list of

advantages (Glazkov, N.O., Belyaeva, D.V., 2019.):

1. Simplicity of fetching all the necessary

data with one single request;

2. Caching;

3. Query performance;

4. Accurate data sampling;

5. Compatibility with modern applications;

6. Deprecation at the field level;

7. No need to create multiple REST requests.

To retrieve data, you only need to enter one query;

8. Not tied to a specific database or storage

engine;

9. A whole system of data types is used, etc.

Apollo GraphQL is a comprehensive state

management library that allows you to manage both

local and remote data using GraphQL. This

technology is used to retrieve, cache, and modify

application data when the user interface is

automatically updated.

6 TESTING AN INNOVATIVE

SOLUTION ON REAL

CUSTOMERS USING THE

USER'S GEODATA

To test the theory that our unique ideas can actually

influence the solution to the last mile problem, we

conducted testing. For this we have gathered two

groups of participants. The experimental group used

our application and the control group did not. The

experimental group consisted of 28 people, 47% of

whom were women, and 53% were men, their age

ranges from 20 to 35 years (20-25 years - 2%; 25-30

years - 92%; 30-35 years - 6%). The control group

consisted of 29 people, women were 58%, and men

41%, their age also varied from 20 to 35%, but

participants from 25 to 30 years old were 90%, from

20 to 25 years old 7%, and from 30 to 35 years 3%

respectively.

All participants rated the delivery on a five-point

system, where 2 is unsatisfactory and 5 is excellent.

You can see how the grades were distributed in the

following tables:

Table 1: Distribution of ratings of the participants of the

experiment.

Groups Evaluations

(unsatis

factor

(satisfa

ctoril

(good)

(excelle

)

Experim

ental

1 5 12 10

Controls 5 11 8 5

Table 2: Grouping of the ratings of the participants of the

experiment.

Groups Evaluations

2 or 3 (no effect) 4 or 5 (there is an

effect

)

Experim

ental

6 21% 22 79%

Controls 16 35% 13 47%

Further, two hypotheses were put forward:

- the proportion of customers who rated the

delivery as "good" and "excellent" in the

experimental group, no more than in the control

group.

- the proportion of customers who rated the

delivery as “good” and “excellent” in the

experimental group is higher than in the control

group.

ITIDMS-II 2021 - II International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference "Information Technologies and Intelligent Decision Making Systems"

Determined the φ values corresponding to the

percentages in each of the groups:

(79%) = 2,19

(1)

(47%) = 1,511

(2)

Set the significance level to 0.01.

A significance level of 0.01 corresponds to a

critical value:

= 2,31

(3)

The empirical value of

was calculated by

the formula:

(4)

Since

> , the hypothesis is

rejected and, therefore, the noted difference between

the experimental and control groups in the results of

evaluating the delivery of goods is statistically

significant.

The participants in the experimental group were

satisfied with the delivery and became more loyal to

the courier service.

7 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORK

These results confirm that the problem of the last

mile in the delivery of goods is significant. To solve

it and improve the delivery process of goods, it is

necessary to use all modern e-commerce

capabilities. As we have stated elsewhere, the use of

user geodata for accelerated and high-quality

delivery can be considered as a promising direction

for solving the last mile.

Future research is needed to confirm what

conclusions can be drawn from this study.

Further research could fruitfully continue the

consideration of this issue in modern realities.

For further development of the product, we plan

to commercialize the system, provide services to

small and medium-sized businesses, and integrate

our web application into eco-systems popular in

Russia, such as Yandex inc. and OZON inc. The

functionality of the system will be also expanded by

optimizing processes using digitalization tools.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Britvina Valentina

Valentinovna for her extraordinary support in this

article process and our colleagues for their

wonderful collaboration. They supported us greatly

and were always willing to help us.

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International Journal of Advanced Trends in

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Connecting Businesses and Consumers During

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Solving the Last Mile Problem in E-Commerce