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Dynamic Pricing and Routing for Same-Day Delivery

Author

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  • Marlin W. Ulmer

    (Technische Universität Braunschweig, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany)

Abstract

An increasing number of e-commerce retailers offers same-day delivery. To deliver the ordered goods, providers dynamically dispatch a fleet of vehicles transporting the goods from the warehouse to the customers. In many cases, retailers offer different delivery deadline options, from four-hour delivery up to next-hour delivery. Due to the deadlines, vehicles often only deliver a few orders per trip. The overall number of served orders within the delivery horizon is small and the revenue low. As a result, many companies currently struggle to conduct same-day delivery cost-efficiently. In this paper, we show how dynamic pricing is able to substantially increase both revenue and the number of customers we are able to serve the same day. To this end, we present an anticipatory pricing and routing policy (APRP) method that incentivizes customers to select delivery deadline options efficiently for the fleet to fulfill. This maintains the fleet’s flexibility to serve more future orders. We model the respective pricing and routing problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). To apply APRP, the state-dependent opportunity costs per customer and option are required. To this end, we use a guided offline value function approximation (VFA) based on state space aggregation. The VFA approximates the opportunity cost for every state and delivery option with respect to the fleet’s flexibility. As an offline method, APRP is able to determine suitable prices instantly when a customer orders. In an extensive computational study, we compare APRP with a policy based on fixed prices and with conventional temporal and geographical pricing policies. APRP outperforms the benchmark policies significantly, leading to both a higher revenue and more customers served the same day.

Suggested Citation

  • Marlin W. Ulmer, 2020. "Dynamic Pricing and Routing for Same-Day Delivery," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(4), pages 1016-1033, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:54:y:2020:i:4:p:1016-1033
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.2019.0958
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    Cited by:

    1. Waßmuth, Katrin & Köhler, Charlotte & Agatz, Niels & Fleischmann, Moritz, 2023. "Demand management for attended home delivery—A literature review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 311(3), pages 801-815.
    2. Bosse, Alexander & Ulmer, Marlin W. & Manni, Emanuele & Mattfeld, Dirk C., 2023. "Dynamic priority rules for combining on-demand passenger transportation and transportation of goods," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(1), pages 399-408.
    3. Marlin W. Ulmer & Barrett W. Thomas & Ann Melissa Campbell & Nicholas Woyak, 2021. "The Restaurant Meal Delivery Problem: Dynamic Pickup and Delivery with Deadlines and Random Ready Times," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(1), pages 75-100, 1-2.
    4. Côté, Jean-François & Alves de Queiroz, Thiago & Gallesi, Francesco & Iori, Manuel, 2023. "A branch-and-regret algorithm for the same-day delivery problem," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    5. Zhan, Xingbin & Szeto, W.Y. & Wang, Yue, 2023. "The ride-hailing sharing problem with parcel transportation," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    6. Zhang, Jian & Woensel, Tom Van, 2023. "Dynamic vehicle routing with random requests: A literature review," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).
    7. Zhang, Jian & Luo, Kelin & Florio, Alexandre M. & Van Woensel, Tom, 2023. "Solving large-scale dynamic vehicle routing problems with stochastic requests," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 596-614.
    8. Soeffker, Ninja & Ulmer, Marlin W. & Mattfeld, Dirk C., 2022. "Stochastic dynamic vehicle routing in the light of prescriptive analytics: A review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 298(3), pages 801-820.
    9. Özarık, Sami Serkan & Lurkin, Virginie & Veelenturf, Lucas P. & Van Woensel, Tom & Laporte, Gilbert, 2023. "An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search heuristic for last-mile deliveries under stochastic customer availability and multiple visits," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 194-220.
    10. Klein, Vienna & Steinhardt, Claudius, 2023. "Dynamic demand management and online tour planning for same-day delivery," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(2), pages 860-886.
    11. Marlin W. Ulmer & Alan Erera & Martin Savelsbergh, 2022. "Dynamic service area sizing in urban delivery," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 44(3), pages 763-793, September.
    12. Liu, Zeyu & Li, Xueping & Khojandi, Anahita, 2022. "The flying sidekick traveling salesman problem with stochastic travel time: A reinforcement learning approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    13. Alexander M. Stroh & Alan L. Erera & Alejandro Toriello, 2022. "Tactical Design of Same-Day Delivery Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3444-3463, May.
    14. Fleckenstein, David & Klein, Robert & Steinhardt, Claudius, 2023. "Recent advances in integrating demand management and vehicle routing: A methodological review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 499-518.
    15. Abdollahi, Mohammad & Yang, Xinan & Nasri, Moncef Ilies & Fairbank, Michael, 2023. "Demand management in time-slotted last-mile delivery via dynamic routing with forecast orders," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(2), pages 704-718.
    16. Avraham, Edison & Raviv, Tal, 2021. "The steady-state mobile personnel booking problem," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 266-288.

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