Best Performance Frontiers for Buy-Online-Pickup-in-Store order fulfilment

Bart L. MacCarthy, Lina Zhang and Luc Muyldermans

International Journal of Production Economics, 2019, vol. 211, issue C, 251-264

Abstract: Buy-Online-Pickup-in-Store (BOPS) retail services have gained increasing popularity as they offer benefits for both customers and retailers in omni-channel retailing. However, using conventional retail stores to fulfil orders received online whilst also serving walk-in customers is challenging for retailers, particularly when a high customer service level is promised to online customers (e.g., order by a certain time and pick up in store after a specific time later the same day). We examine store picking operations for same day BOPS services. Specifically, we derive Best Performance Frontiers (BPFs) for single wave and multi-wave in-store order picking. New relationships, propositions, and results are developed to determine the minimum picking rate needed in stores to guarantee a target service level, the number of picking waves a retailer should launch in an ordering cycle, and the timing of picking waves. We also examine demand surge scenarios with different order arrival rates in an ordering cycle. Insights from, and implications of the results are discussed for retailers that seek to benchmark their current BOPS performances and understand how to schedule and improve the picking of online orders in conventional retail stores and the picking rates needed to guarantee a desired service level for online customers.

Keywords: Omni-channel retailing; BOPS; Best performance frontier; Picking rate; Picking waves (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527319300453
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:211:y:2019:i:c:p:251-264

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2019.01.037

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Economics is currently edited by Stefan Minner

More articles in International Journal of Production Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().