BUMOLDS: Business Models for Local Delivery Platforms

With platform economy becoming a hegemonic model in market exchanges (Srnicek, 2017; VanDijck, Poell & De Waal, 2018), consumers are now getting used to the idea of receiving items ordered online in hours and not days, and companies are pressured to move toward an instant delivery-of-everything world. This trend, pushed by Covid-19, has created a new business environment in which large, global, multi-sided platforms are competing with local, small scale initiatives. Even if large multi-sided platforms (e.g. Amazon, Deliveroo, Glovo) allow small and medium businesses to grow, they are criticized for the huge quantities of packaging used, undignified working conditions, impersonal standardized digital interface, increased transportation’s usage and emissions. Some platforms have recently started to change the last mile delivery toward more sustainable solutions. For instance, they use cargo-bikes and low impact solutions offered by express couriers (e.g. Bartolini, TNT), typically used by local platforms. Moreover, they are questioned for their disproportionated power as gatekeepers and for the exploitation and asymmetries they create against local suppliers (Khan, 2018). Local delivery platforms may have the unprecedent opportunity to overcome these drawbacks. Nevertheless, an overall framework still lacks for guiding the design and management of local platforms in developing a new competitive positioning, in which local resources are protected and promoted in the interest of local stakeholders (suppliers, consumers and the local community) in order to compete with larger platforms. The aim of the BUMOLDS project is to define a prototype of a local delivery platform that creates value by promoting and leveraging local resources while meeting local stakeholders’ needs. Local delivery platforms are poised to generate profits at scale as they actively integrate multiple impacts on the society and the environment and put consumers at the core of their business model. Thus, local platforms differentiate from large ones, as they focus on environmental and social value drivers, and purposefully distance themselves from logistics, convenience, and other operational value drivers. Therefore, the BUMOLDS project addresses the following question: Which characteristics should a business model for local delivery platforms have to respect the environment and the society while putting the relationship with local stakeholders at its focus? BUMOLDS has at its core the ability to bring business and local society together while competing with big online platforms which drain resources from the local context. In doing so, it integrates suppliers’ determinants to adopt a local delivery platform; consumers’ willingness to use local delivery platforms and their expectations in terms of habits, attitudes, and product and services choices; the ability to integrate and promote relationships with consumers, suppliers, employees, and other local stakeholders.