Big promotions of online retailers in different shopping festivals often lead to an overwhelming demand surge in parcel delivery. Besides using its own distribution capacity, online retailers usually adopt capacity sharing to cope with the demand surge. Because of the low cost of unmanned distribution, online retailers can adopt unmanned vehicle distribution (UVD) capability sharing. We examine an online retailer’s UVD capacity sharing strategies with a logistics firm under demand surge. We develop sharing models under the unilateral and bidirectional option contracts, from which we derive the optimal ex-ante and ex-post sharing strategies and the corresponding initial, option, and total sharing quantities. We find that if the online retailer wants to secure more UVD capacity in advance, it should use the bidirectional option; otherwise, the unilateral option. Moreover, both the initial sharing and total sharing quantities under the unilateral option are greater than those under the bidirectional option, which however can increase the flexibility of the online retailer. We conduct numerical studies to ascertain the effects of the model parameters on the optimal outcomes. The numerical results show that the degree of demand fluctuation has a greater impact on the initial and total sharing quantities under the unilateral option, and has a greater impact on the option sharing quantity under the bidirectional option. Finally, comparing self-built UVD capacity and UVD capacity sharing, we generate insights to provide guidance for the operations of online retailers.

在线零售商在不同购物节中的大促销通常会导致包裹交付的需求激增。除了利用自己的分销能力之外，在线零售商通常还采用容量共享来应对需求激增。由于无人配送的成本低廉，在线零售商可以采用无人车辆配送（UVD）功能共享。在需求激增的情况下，我们与物流公司研究了在线零售商的UVD容量共享策略。我们在单边和双向期权合约下开发共享模型，从中我们得出最优的事前和事后共享策略以及相应的初始，选项和总共享数量。我们发现，如果在线零售商想要提前获得更多的UVD容量，则应使用双向选项；否则，单方面选择。而且，单方选择下的初始共享数量和总共享数量都大于双向选择下的共享数量，但是这可以增加在线零售商的灵活性。我们进行数值研究以确定模型参数对最佳结果的影响。数值结果表明，单边期权下需求波动的程度对初始和总分享量影响较大，而双向期权下需求波动的程度对期权分享量影响更大。最后，