Material Flow Studies
TIAN Xin, REN Jia-ning, ZHOU Xiao-xue, LU Zhao-xu, TAO Ye, SHENG Hui-zhan
journal6.
2025, 24(1):
54-62.
The fourth-party logistics can facilitate information sharing and collaborative cooperation in the supply chain, and integrate multiple business models. It offers a feasible solution for county-level retail enterprises to overcome bottlenecks in logistics capabilities, broaden profit-making channels, and enhance revenue scale. Based on a fourth-party logistics framework, this paper takes Yidu Convenience Store, the only county-level chain retail enterprise ranked among the top 20 convenience stores in China, as a case study to explore and summarize the feasible models for the development of chain retail enterprises in county-level areas. The research findings indicate that actively establishing a comprehensive informatized logistics system and transitioning to the fourth-party logistics model are practical ways for the development of county-level chain retail enterprises. By leveraging efficient logistics to implement diverse profit-making models, such as physical stores and community group-buying, these enterprises can reduce costs through resource reuse and achieve synergistic efficiency gains. Moreover, the transformation of the management model can facilitate the expansion of the scale of retail enterprises. Therefore, county-level retail enterprises should strengthen logistics construction, draw on the fourth-party logistics model, adopt multiple business models, cut operating costs, and expand profit-making channels so as to achieve the development of chain-store operations.