Small-Commodity market logistics system : A case study of Yiwu

Sammanfattning: It is known that the small commodity markets are influential to people’s life, but their operations are unique. The lack of standard management has become the biggest obstacle for the development of logistics services in a commodity market. How traditional logistics model can be operated effectively in a commodity market is therefore interesting in this study. The purposes of this thesis are to characterize the commodity logistics systems, identify the challenges of logistics systems in the commodity market, and discuss how the use of e-business platform may improve the logistics system. In order to realize the purposes, the qualitative approach was used in this research. Literature review, interview and case study in one Chinese city with a big commodity market are implemented in the research. Survey study has been carried out to collect data for analyzing the logistics systems. As the main results in this thesis, small-volume, short-life cycle, variety and variability are found to be the main characteristics of a logistics system in the commodity market in the case city. The challenges are therefore about how to design and improve the logistics system so that it can adapt to these characteristics. Finally, this thesis presents the analysis on how an e-business platform can provide effective solutions to meet these challenges.