Urban logistics, utilizing all the attributes of logistics in terms of compliance with the object, place, time, route, quantity, technology, quality, economy, ecology, and delivery safety, appears as an antidote to the pathology of traffic in the central area of the city. The effectiveness of this remedy is determined by the existing and achievable transport capacity of this area, mainly for parking traffic, including the supply of retail trade and automotive accessibility for its customers.
Modern man is to a large extent homo motoricus.
The inconvenience of access to the desired downtown retail network encourages him to shop in peripheral shopping centers with sufficient parking space, and this leads to the commercial and service depreciation of the city center. This occurs particularly drastically in agglomerations, but increasingly also in medium and small cities. Regardless of market laws, global social and cultural reasons viewed from the perspective of logistics point to the city-forming function of the vitality of the city center and to the preservation, and in many cases the indispensable restoration, of its significant commercial function.
Apart from activities in the field of traffic logistics engineering, an instrument serving the commercial revitalization of the city center, and one that does not require infrastructure investments, can be e-commerce, which is also useful in operations outside the sphere of motor congestion in this area.
The elementary circle of analysis
The logistics chain in retail trade includes three links in the adopted area of operation and the classic trade process:
– delivery of products to stores
– physical sales offer along with their appropriate assortment, quality, price supply, etc.
– purchasing the appropriate products.
The analysis covers the front part of this process, i.e., the acquisition of a product by the consumer, or more precisely – in the context of the subject of consideration – replacing the physical contact of the customer with the store with intellectual contact. The contact of an individual buyer is mainly considered, and only a purchase intended at the customer’s initiative. It is worth mentioning, however, that not only the customer is interested in alleviating logistical difficulties in store accessibility, but the seller is and should be increasingly interested as well. Hence, more and more often – although this is not a significant scale – the store is beginning to reach customers with a product offer electronically. This analysis is an attempt to show some of the effects of using e-commerce in alleviating the commercial and transport problems of downtown logistics.
Government assessment of the state of e-commerce in Poland
Trade infrastructure is characterized by technical, technological, and IT weaknesses. A symptom of this is the low level of use of automatic product identification and the practical lack of electronic data interchange in distribution and sales. Trade is also subject to the process of globalization, and a factor conducive to this is the development of e-commerce, which enables remote shopping. The process of trade globalization manifests itself in the unification of the operating methods of trading companies, sales techniques used, marketing strategies, and ways of shaping the structure of the retail network and meeting consumer needs. As a result of globalization processes, there is an improvement in the quality of goods and methods of offering them to buyers, as well as a reduction in costs both in the sphere of production and in trade.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 1/2004.