Review of Related Literature

E-commerce is a rapidly growing outlet for consumers and with today’s technological

advancements and society’s need for speed and efficiency in almost every transaction, it is

becoming the norm for transactions between two parties. E-commerce provides a platform for

people who are geographically limited, it is highly accessible and does not require one’s presence

inside a physical store. It can be accessed anywhere provided one has access to the internet and

consumers will no longer have to spend time, effort and money travelling to a store location.

This project is unique in a sense that its transactions are primarily focused on wholesale or

bulk orders, whereas common e-commerce are individualistic or limited in nature. Therefore, the

proponents are looking into similar research and studies under the field of consumer and business

processes in decision-making, preferences, behaviour, data analytics and logistics of e-commerce

as well as related systems.

Earlier studies considered the buying decision-making process in numerous B2B e-

commerce environments using different models. The idea of combining buyers’ preferences was

first introduced in buying decision-making using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) (Chen et al.,

2008, Nie et al., 2011). In this structure, individual preferences were combined into group general

agreements and buyers communicated with each other using a buyer collective process (BCP). A

variation of this is a mixed approach using the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Technique for

Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (AHP-TOPSIS) to select the best substitutes

(Cheng, 2008, Mukherjee, 2014). However, the problem of uncertainty in obtaining the weights

for each criterion was introduced - either by objective or subjective methods (Xu et al., 2015).

AHP is known for its sufficiency in ranking, choice making, prioritisation, resource

allocation, benchmarking, quality management, conflict resolution, and decision-making (Chen et

al., 2014, Tyagi et al., 2014, Cheng, 2008, Mukherjee, 2014). It has the advantage of allowing a

hierarchical structure of the criteria, which provides users with a better focus on specific criterias

when allotting the weights. It has the capacity to evaluate quantitative as well as qualitative criteria

and alternatives on the same preference scale of nine levels. AHP can foresee support for group

level decision-making through consensus by calculating the geometric mean of the individual

pairwise comparisons (Macharis et al., 2004, Tyagi et al., 2017, Blagojevic et al., 2016).

Another study of interest focuses on the structure of time windows which has been generally

considered in the vehicle’s routing to deal with scenarios where deliveries must take place in a

described time frame. The vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW, Desaulniers et

al., 2014) has been used as the basis for solving these types of problems. Applications of the

VRPTW model for pick-up and delivery courier problems (Sungur et al., 2010), for optimizing

the probability of to receive their deliveries on-time (Zhang et al., 2016), and routing based on

territory (Schneider et al., 2014) have been proposed. The models assume the availability of time

windows, i.e., they have either been committed to by the provider of logistics, or the customers

have informed them (self-imposed time windows, see Jabali et al., 2015). Although most

customers would appreciate of being able to select a convenient time for their deliveries (Xu et

al., 2008), time windows, for the most part, are currently unavailable when an order is placed

(particularly when the delivery is made by companies that handles parcels and the like, see

Vanelslander et al., 2013). Committing to time windows for all customers is a main problem,

particularly if the time frame is rather large (e.g., 3 hours). It can significantly impact delivery

costs (Boyer et al., 2009, Punakivi et al., 2001). The impact it would cause in the delivery of low

value consumer goods is proportionally larger. (Gevaers et al., 2011), where the excess delivery

costs could cancel the benefits of online shopping (Agatz et al., 2008). Therefore, the time
windows are not defined for bulk and small package deliveries. (Wong, 2008). As a result, the

VRPTW is not a viable model for deliveries since it is not economically feasible to fix time

windows for every delivery.