The Impact of E-commerce on Transport

There are emerging changes in the provision of logistic services brought about by the rapid take up of e-Commerce. At this time the logistics world as we know it is changing conceptually. The momentum is still gathering for widespread changes to traditional practices within the logistics chain, although some practices have already been radically rethought and reinvented at the margin. This paper examines logistic interaction with e-Commerce and e-Business on several fronts. Firstly, how e-Commerce practices will demand changes from an adaptive logistics chain and secondly, how logistics practices might be rethought by logistics providers in the context of more “knowledgeable” B2C, e-Commerce retailers. The paper also examines what rethought strategies logistics providers may offer the searching B2B sector. The areas to be examined briefly are: purchasing, warehousing, response measurement, logistic outsourcing, regulation, and the impacts of regulatory geography on logistics in a comparative continental sense. Hit Words: e-logistics, logistics, supply chain, e-commerce trends, purchasing, Australian logistics.