Last Mile Delivery Technologies for Electronic Commerce: A Bibliometric Review

The rapid growth in e-commerce has created challenges in last mile delivery, including rising costs, environmental concerns, and increasing customer expectations. Various last mile delivery (LMD) technologies have been adopted to address the issues. However, existing studies on LMD technologies are fragmented across different geographical contexts and focus on a wide range of technologies. The motivations for utilising LMD technologies also vary. Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive analysis of current research to identify trends and propose future research agendas on LMD technologies in e-commerce. A bibliometric review of 605 publications from Scopus was conducted to address these gaps. The findings indicate that most studies focus on three common themes: sustainability, delivery efficiency, and emerging technological innovations. The emerging technological innovations remain an underexplored theme. Future research agendas should focus on integrating intelligent technologies with emerging delivery vehicles to improve sustainability and efficiency within LMD.