Economic Analysis On The Forth Party Logistics

With globalization of economy and the development of IT, more and more enterprises focus on the logistics to develop their core competence. Forth party logistics discussed in this paper is put forward under this situation. The research of forth party logistics is in the initial stage, scholars now haven't a unique definition of forth party logistics. Some scholars have researched 4PL from different directions, but haven't made system theory. The goal of this paper is to give an economic analysis of forth party logistics, in order to make people recognize the importance of forth party logistics, and hope to provide a guide to logistics development.Firstly, this paper describes conception and the forming mechanism of forth party logistics. After summering the different definitions of forth party logistics, analyzing the characters of it, this paper gives a clearer definition of forth party logistics, and compares forth party logistics with third party logistics. Then it explains how the forth party logistics comes into being through the two aspects of demand and supply, taking division of labor theories and traded cost theories as the theories foundation of its arising. Secondly, this paper focuses on the analyst of cooperation between forth party logistics providers and third party logistics providers, which is the key point of operation mechanism of forth party logistics. It testifies the possibility of cooperation between forth party logistics providers and third party logistics providers. Thirdly, this paper analyzes how to devises a math mode to analysis the cooperation between forth party logistics providers and third party logistics providers with Game theory. Then design a inspirit mechanism to improve the performance of third party logistics providers. At the end of this paper, a general conclusion of the dissertation reaches is given, along with the direction of further researcher in this topic, and some suggestions about how to establish forth party logistics.