The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant breakdown of the traditional retail sector resulting in an unprecedented surge in e-commerce demand for the delivery of essential goods. Consequently, the pandemic raised concerns pertaining to e-retailers’ ability to maintain and efficiently restore level of service in the event of such low-probability high-severity market disruptions. Thus, considering e-retailers’ role in the supply of essential goods, this study assesses the resilience of last-mile distribution operations under disruptions by integrating a Continuous Approximation (CA) based last-mile distribution model, the resilience triangle concept, and the Robustness, Redundancy, Resourcefulness, and Rapidity (R4) resilience framework. The proposed R4 Last Mile Distribution Resilience Triangle Framework is a novel performance-based qualitative-cum-quantitative domain-agnostic framework. Through a set of empirical analyses, this study highlights the opportunities and challenges of different distribution/outsourcing strategies to cope with disruption. In particular, the authors analyzed the use of an independent crowdsourced fleet (flexible service contingent on driver availability); the use of collection-point pickup (unconstrained downstream capacity contingent on customer willingness to self-collect); and integration with a logistics service provider (reliable service with high distribution costs). Overall, this work recommends the e-retailers to create a suitable platform to ensure reliable crowdsourced deliveries, position sufficient collection-points to ensure customer willingness to self-collect, and negotiate contracts with several logistics service providers to ensure adequate backup distribution.

COVID-19 大流行导致传统零售业严重崩溃，导致电子商务对必需品交付的需求空前激增。因此，这种流行病引发了人们对电子零售商在发生这种低概率高严重性市场中断时维持和有效恢复服务水平的能力的担忧。因此，考虑到电子零售商在必需品供应中的作用，本研究通过整合基于连续近似 (CA) 的最后一英里配送模型、弹性三角形概念和Robustness, Redundancy, Resourcefulness, and Rapidity (R4) 弹性框架。拟议的 R4 Last Mile Distribution Resilience Triangle Framework 是一种新颖的基于性能的定性和定量领域不可知框架。通过一系列实证分析，本研究强调了不同分销/外包策略应对中断的机遇和挑战。特别是，作者分析了独立众包车队的使用（灵活的服务取决于司机的可用性）；使用收集点取件（不受限制的下游容量取决于客户自行收集的意愿）；与物流服务提供商的整合（可靠的服务，高配送成本）。总的来说，这项工作建议电子零售商创建一个合适的平台，以确保可靠的众包交付，