Browsing by Author "Kontio, Aleksanteri"
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- Crowdsourcing Goods Deliveries in Multi-Sided Markets – A Multiple Case Study
Perustieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis(2016-08-24) Kontio, AleksanteriCrowdsourcing is an intriguing option to carry out the last-mile delivery of goods. Due to the rising trend of ecommerce many companies face the pressure to offer home deliveries to their customers. However, companies still struggle to make these last-mile deliveries profitable due to the challenging optimization of distances between drop-off points and corresponding delivery times. Crowdsourcing tackles these obstacles by tapping into a large mass of individual deliverers and their unused resources, such as the leftover space in a customer’s car. Indeed, crowdsourcing is proven to enable faster, and more cost efficient deliveries. Crowds have been exploited in a wide array of businesses but only recently has the trend of crowdsourcing goods deliveries emerged. Consequently, there exists only limited empirical research on the subject. Further, thus far the crowdsourcing literature has been mainly based on various applications on crowdsourcing product development. Hence, it is not yet fully understood how crowdsourcing goods delivery platforms engage their deliverers and grow the platform. The aim of this study is to analyze strategies that crowdsourcing goods delivery platforms adopt to realize network effects and engage crowds. This qualitative multiple-case study explores nine crowdsourcing goods delivery companies that operate solely as intermediaries that connect people who need something delivered with those who are able and willing to do the task. The data analysis follows Eisenhardt's (1989) instructions on building theory from case study research, deriving tentative findings within the individual cases and then comparing these emergent patterns across the cases. A framework was synthesized from recent crowdsourcing and multi-sided platform literature to focus the analysis on issues closely related to crowdsourcing platforms. The framework observes openness, pricing and governance strategies used by the platform owners. This study reveals strategies that the crowdsourcing goods delivery platforms adopted to build up a viable platform. They combined strategies that are typical of both multi-sided platforms and crowdsourcing environments. Further, my findings suggest that these platform strategies were used sequentially to address different challenges in the different phases of the case companies’ life cycle. - Strategiainnovaation prosessi ja sen soveltaminen pk-yrityksissä
Perustieteiden korkeakoulu | Bachelor's thesis(2013-12-15) Kontio, Aleksanteri