Tailoring Transportation Planning Decisions To Diverse Urban Environments

As the world's population continues to urbanize, providing efficient and effective logistics service to customers in urban areas has become an increasingly important, but difficult task. Recent vehicle routing studies suggest that logistics planners face numerous difficulties during decision-making due to certain complexities associated with the urban environment, but to date, specific challenges have remained unidentified. Using a multiple case study methodology, this research examines several environmental characteristics that influence vehicle routing decisions across eight U.S. urban centers, and contrasts decisions firms make when creating solutions to address these factors. Cross-case synthesis uncovered patterns connecting specific environmental characteristics with variations on traditional vehicle routing decisions. Results allow us to construct a theoretical framework and propositions to guide managers when tailoring urban logistics strategies to urban environments having different combinations of structural characteristics.