High-order Services Research Articles

Crowdsourced order‐fulfillment policies using in‐store customers

Omni‐channel services, such as buy‐online‐pick‐up‐from‐store, transfer the in‐store logistics once completed by shoppers to retailers. To cost‐effectively meet the high demands for such pickup services, we introduce a crowdsourced order‐fulfillment policy that deploys in‐store customers to pick items for online orders while completing their own personal shopping. As opposed to existing store fulfillment policies, this new concept utilizes in‐store customers to help, not constrain, dedicated pickers. Empirical data indicate that a high percentage of surveyed in‐store shoppers would be willing to occasionally participate in such a program. In‐store customers willing to participate were observed to be heterogeneous in their efforts, with variability in how much extra time they would be willing to provide and would prefer picking tasks that had only a small deviation from their personal shopping. Motivated by these empirical results, the decision problem of how to assign picking tasks for arriving online orders with a given service commitment, to a set of arriving in‐store customers or an abundant set of dedicated pickers, was formalized to capture the uncertainty and heterogeneity of using in‐store customers for in‐store picking tasks. We propose a tractable decision‐making methodology to determine whether an order will meet both service commitment feasibility and in‐store customer availability with a probability at least equal to a target threshold. This method captures dynamic order placements and in‐store customer arrivals and stochasticity in in‐store customers' shopping baskets. Extensive computational experiments for varying operational conditions of a grocery store dynamically matching actual online orders to arriving in‐store customers helps answer open questions from practitioners. Compensating in‐store customers based on their additional efforts reduced costs of fulfillment by greater than 30%, on average, compared to a baseline that uses only dedicated pickers for store fulfillment. Using the past five shopping baskets of participating in‐store customers to estimate assignment decisions can achieve both high online order service commitments and in‐store customer availability requirements. Our results suggest that in‐store customers should be assigned smaller orders than dedicated pickers.

Construction of High-Speed Railway Based Living Zone Considering High-order Service Accessibility: focused on comparison between Chungcheong, Yeongnam, Honam and Gangwon Region

Construction of High-Speed Railway Based Living Zone Considering High-order Service Accessibility: focused on comparison between Chungcheong, Yeongnam, Honam and Gangwon Region

Industrial Composition and Agglomeration Shadow: Evidence from China’s Large Urban Systems

New economic geography (NEG) raises the question why the “agglomeration shadow” effect is significant in some urban regions but not others. This study attempts to answer this question in the context of China by examining the impact of industrial composition of core cities on regional urban systems. Based on the model of urban location from NEG, this study attempts to examine the population growth of six core cities and their urban systems in China. We find services exert a significantly negative effect on market potential, while that of manufacturing is positive. The results are robust in different spatial scales and time spans. This suggests that strong centralizing and agglomerative effects of higher order service sector are more likely to cast an agglomeration shadow on noncore cities in China’s regional urban systems. The differences in industrial composition can explain why an urban region centered on a large core city like Beijing is more likely to cast an agglomeration shadow on its surrounding cities compared to the Shanghai-centered urban region. The findings hold important implications for uneven development of regional urban systems and construction of metropolitan areas in China.

The influence of city reputation on T-KIBS concentration

ABSTRACT In a context of increasing intercity competition, one of the major goals of the cities is to attract business services, in particular knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). In spite of recognized importance of some locational determinants, already identified in the literature, not all of the determinants of KIBS locational choices are known. Studies that considered city reputation as a possible antecedent of KIBS location are scarce. This study aims to examine the influence of city reputation on technology-KIBS urban concentration. Building on the theoretical arguments that support the geographic centrality of high-order services, the study shows that different combinations of antecedent conditions can justify a high concentration of technology-KIBS (T-KIBS) in urban areas, including the combination of city reputation with access to clients. The results support the idea that geographical proximity to clients is also important in technology-related industries, in particular the ones that are knowledge-intensive. The findings suggest that tourism policies that enhance city reputation can be included in cities’ strategies designed to attract business services. Furthermore, it is highlighted that policy-makers do not need to improve all conditions to improve the city competitiveness and they can use different combinations of factors to attract T-KIBS.

AMIR

Service demand burstiness, or serial correlations in resource service demands, has previously been shown to have an adverse impact on system performance metrics such as response time. This article proposes AMIR , an analytic framework to characterize burstiness and identify strategies to reduce its impact on performance. AMIR considers an overtake-free system model consisting of multiple queues that service multiple classes of sessions, i.e., sequences of requests. Given the per-class service demand distributions and number of sessions belonging to each class, AMIR can identify an ordering of sessions, i.e., a schedule, that minimizes burstiness at the bottleneck. Hence, it is likely to improve system responsiveness metrics, including mean session wait time and total schedule processing time. To characterize burstiness, the technique uses an order O schedule burstiness metric β O representing the mean probability that O + 1 consecutive sessions in the schedule have resource demands at the bottleneck greater than the mean bottleneck demand of the schedule. For a given O , AMIR uses Integer Linear Programming (ILP) to identify schedules that progressively minimize β i ∀ i ∈ {1, … O }. We conduct an extensive simulation study to provide insights on the conditions under which such schedules can improve system responsiveness. These results show that schedules derived from AMIR can significantly outperform those derived from baseline policies such as Shortest Job First (SJF) and random scheduling when session classes are dissimilar from one another in terms of their service demand distributions. Furthermore, minimizing for higher orders of schedule burstiness is most critical when the bottleneck is heavily utilized and when the service demands of a workload are highly variable. For the system model that we consider, we are not aware of other techniques that are designed to analytically derive insights on the performance impact of high-order service demand burstiness.

Do residents of Affordable Housing Communities in China suffer from relative accessibility deprivation? A case study of Nanjing

Affordable housing has emerged as a key issue in urban development in a wide range of countries. Themes in research on affordable housing development across the world are reviewed. Affordable Housing Communities for low income households have been built on a large scale in developing countries such as China during the last two decades, mainly in urban fringe areas. Evidence on the impact of the location on access of residents to services is rare. Studying Nanjing, this paper compares spatial access to services between Affordable Housing Communities and Other Housing Communities by measuring distances and imputing walking time between residential land parcels and facilities. Affordable Housing Communities have significantly poorer access than Other Housing Communities, because of poor neighbourhood provision of low order services and poor access to high order services. A household survey of Affordable Housing Communities and Other Housing Communities records the daily lives, degrees of satisfaction and community attachments of residents. Residents in affordable housing have low degrees of satisfaction, weak community attachments and desire to move. The findings emphasize that service provision should be planned to keep pace with Affordable housing construction, so that these communities become better places to live.

Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) Use and User Innovation: High-Order Services, Geographic Hierarchies and Internet Use in Quebec's Manufacturing Sector

Shearmur R. and Doloreux D. Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) use and user innovation: high-order services, geographic hierarchies and internet use in Quebec's manufacturing sector, Regional Studies. Geographic proximity between users and suppliers of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) provides no advantage in terms of innovation performance. This paper first establishes that it is those KIBS most closely associated with innovation that exhibit the highest mean distance to their users. It then shows that there is no connection between distance to KIBS suppliers and propensity to innovate. These results point to a Christallerian logic whereby innovators seek out KIBS (irrespective of distance), but whereby mean distances tend to be greater between users and innovation-related KIBS suppliers (located in central places), reflecting the different geographies of manufacturing users and service suppliers.

Services and high skills: a new challenge for developing medium-sized cities

Medium-sized cities are often considered as a valuable substitute to a large metropolis as they may promote better sustainable growth. However, these second rank conurbations do not benefit from economies of scale as do larger cities. They share some characteristics with a big metropolis, notably their spatial spreading on surroundings areas, but are not able to attract high-order service functions. The research reported here is supported by a statistical analysis of censuses from 1982 to 1999. It highlights the service-location patterns of medium-sized cities compared with metropolises, proposes a typology of medium-sized cities based on their economic structure and tries to explain through regression analysis the growth sources of their economy.

Identifying the export component of industries that produce partly for local consumption

Identification of the export nature of an industry in a center within a region has proven difficult because of the complexities, dynamic nature and maturation of regional economies. Location Theory and the work of Jan Tinbergen imply that some industries (hybrid industries) in a center may produce both for local consumption and for export within a region. We focus on hybrid industries in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the Census Midwest region. We present new statistical tests designed to identify the export component of three different types of hybrid industries. The first type of industry is present in virtually all MSAs, and appears to produce for export in a subset of those MSAs. We present a test to identify the subset of MSAs for which the industry is hybrid. The second type of hybrid industry is absent in a number of MSAs and appears to produce for export in some or all the MSAs in which it is present. Our statistical technique seeks to identify the portion of employment in the industry in the region which produces for export production. Finally, we focus on high-order business services in the five largest MSAs in the Midwest region. While these industries typically produce for local consumption they may produce for export, especially in large MSAs. We present a statistical test for identifying the export component of these industries in large MSAs. To varying degrees, we compare our tests with results obtained using location quotients.

Place-bound versus footloose firms: wiring metropolitan areas in a policy context

In the development of modern urban systems, we are facing a shift from central cities as the major location of coordination functions, high-order services and innovative activities, to interconnected nodes at some distance in a larger metropolitan area. However, which cities in the emerging new spatial constellation qualify to become such a node is not yet clear, and depends also on the organizing capacity of the municipalities involved. This article addresses spread over a larger metropolitan area from the point of view of place-bound versus footloose behavior of young, innovative firms as the drivers of economic renewal. A theoretical review of location needs and footlooseness is followed by an empirical contribution to identify whether increased footlooseness of such companies is emerging in the Netherlands. The results prompt the need for a more thorough reflection on related policy issues. The policy part of the article addresses in particular some evolutionary views to understand why urban policymaking is subject to various systemic constraints, while next some empirical results on weaknesses in the urban organizing capacity to benefit from a shift towards a global metropolitan area are highlighted. In this context, we focus the attention specifically on policies dealing with information and communication technology and the uncertainty at hand.

Growth and decline in the Canadian urban system: the impact of emerging economic, policy and demographic trends

The Canadian urban system was first shaped by exogenous demand for staples and, subsequently, by the dichotomy between an industrial heartland and a resource based hinterland. Presently, transformations affecting the economy, policy-making and demography herald profound changes in the future configuration of the Canadian urban system. One possible scenario is a revival of the staples economy as economic globalization raises demand for commodities. Another scenario would entail a concentration of growth in large urban centres, by virtue of their attractiveness to specialized and high-order service occupations, two rapidly expanding economic sectors, and their strong pull on immigrants. In the case of either scenario, we can expect further polarization between growing and shrinking portions of the urban system (parts of the heartland in the first case and small urban areas in the second) in a neo-liberal policy context that is unfavourable to regional economic development interventions. The evolution of the Canadian urban system between 1971 and 2006 and present distributions of factors of growth and decline point to the second scenario, a growing large city-small city dichotomy. The article closes by discussing likely consequences of the resulting urban system configuration on labour market adjustments and public sector expenditure.

The Central Business District of Hong Kong: Spatial and Functional Changes Since the 1990s

The central business district (CBD) has traditionally been the economic heart of the city with the greatest concentration of offices and retail establishments. The CBD boundary and internal structure indeed change constantly over time, as a result of interactions among activities within and outside the CBD, as well as due to the influence of external environments. Hong Kong and, in particular, its CBD have not only been affected by regional and local factors, including the intensified socio-economic linkages with the mainland of China and the local economic transition from manufacturing to services, but also by global forces, such as economic globalization and advancement of information and communications technologies (ICTs). In view of its dynamic nature, this paper aims to trace the development path of the CBD from the early 1990s to the start of this new millennium. I firstly examine the functional changes of the CBD by using sectoral employment statistics. Upon demarcation of the CBD, I subsequently analyze changes in its territorial-spatial extent throughout the past decade. This study throws light on the dynamics of the CBD in both the physical and functional dimensions. Instead of being deteriorated, Hong Kong's CBD continues to grow both laterally and vertically. The purification processes, i.e. more highorder services and retailing activities but fewer low-order ones, are also intensifying. The findings generate a foresight analysis on the development trends of the CBD of Hong Kong.

Mutations urbaines et logiques de localisation des emplois : le cas de la communauté de l'agglomeration Dijonnaise (1990, 1999)

Résumé L’objectif de cette recherche est d’étudier les mutations existant au sein de la configuration urbaine de la Communauté de l’Agglomération Dijonnaise, à travers notamment les nouvelles logiques de localisation des services supérieurs. Nous mettons alors en évidence la constitution de différents pôles d’emplois au sein de la COMADI, dont la composition économique diffère selon qu’il s’agit du pôle central ou des pôles périphériques, mais évolue aussi au cours de la période d’étude (1990-1999). Nous montrons que les tendances de localisation des activités de services supérieurs changent et se diversifient : si le centre historique reste spécialisé dans les activités financières, d’assurances et immobilières, les activités de services supérieurs aux entreprises tendent à se localiser davantage en périphérie. Une distinction est observée entre les deux pôles périphériques de la COMADI : au Sud, la constitution d’un pôle dédié aux activités industrielles et au Nord, la formation d’un pôle multifonctionnel.

Culture, Language, and the Location of High-Order Service Functions: The Case of Montreal and Toronto

Today, there is plenty of evidence of metropolization—the concentration of economic activity, particularly of high-order services—in the world’s largest cities. Furthermore, within most national systems, the urban hierarchy is stable, especially toward the top: cities that were the largest 100 years ago continue to dominate their respective systems today. In Canada, however, this is not the case. Over the past 40 years, there has been a reversal at the top of the urban hierarchy, with Montreal losing its dominance in favor of Toronto. In this article, we document the reversal and elaborate a model that accounts for the spatial shifts in high-order services. Our analysis reveals the continued relevance of culture and language and suggests that there are limits to the concentration of high-order service activity. This finding is corroborated by a more detailed look at occupational shifts within a variety of key economic sectors in Montreal and Toronto. We conclude by suggesting that these results and the model we put forward to explain them have implications that go beyond Canada: even in a globalizing world in which the constraints of distance are lessened, cultural and linguistic factors will continue to play an important role in determining the spatial distribution of high-order economic activity.

Understanding regional high-order service growth in Canada: a cointegration approach

Does employment in regional ‘high-order’ service industries cause d~used regional economic growth (as held by subsidy proponents), or vice versa (as held by detractors), or do feedback systems exist where causality runs in both directions simultaneously? We use time series data for GDP and employment for two principal NAICS service industry classifications to test for evidence of long-run equilibria and causality relationships between these variables for Canada and five provinces. The preliminary results suggest some surprising regional variations that are relevant whether or not one believes that firm-specific subsidies hold the elusive key to prosperity in peripheral regions.

Pourquoi Toronto a surclassé Montréal au sommet de la hiérarchie urbaine canadienne ? L’impact des différences culturelles sur la dynamique spatiale des services supérieurs

The Canadian urban system underwent a major change after 1960. The city historically at the top of its urban hierarchy, Montreal, was replaced by its old rival, Toronto, historically in second place. Such reversals are extremely rare. Montreal’s fall from first place appears even more exceptional when we compare it with New York, which has remained the primary corporate and financial center of the United States despite a westward (and southward) shift in population and economic activity. We begin by briefly documenting the Montreal–Toronto reversal, and by eliminating certain explanations. We then introduce a model for understanding the location decisions of high-order service establishments and corporate management units (i.e. head office functions). The model stresses the importance of communications costs and recruitment costs for knowledge workers. We end with an analysis of the spatial dynamics of management functions (within given industries) in Canada from 1971 to 1996.

Economic Transformation and Public Housing Reform in Hong Kong

Abstract Hong Kong's economic development has always been closely tied to events outside its borders. and in particular developments in Mainland China. The large scale provision of public rental housing occurred in tandem with its transformation from an entrepot economy to a manufacturing economy. The view has been persuasively presented that indeed its economic development and public housing programme are related. Public housing remained important, although changed some of its essential characteristics, as Hong Kong transformed again from a manufacturing to a higher order services economy. These changes included a greater emphasis on targeting public rental housing and promoting assisted home ownership. Hong Kong is now in the throes of a third economic transformation. to developing innovation and technology based high value added industries. While some of the essential features of Hong Kong's public housing programme remain intact, policy changes presage a shift in its role in Hong Kong's economy and so...

Evolution of Employment Centers in Seoul

The objectives of this study are to identify employment centers in Seoul for 1981, 1991, and 1996 and to examine the dynamics of urban spatial structure. We found that Seoul has experienced polycentric spatial transformation since 1981, having one major center (CBD) and two sub–centers. Like most Western cities, Seoul has experienced significant CBD decline during 1981–1996. Employment share of the CBD has decreased dramatically from 34.5% in 1981 to 17% in 1996, and absolute number of employment in the CBD has decreased by about 170,000 during 1981–1996. As two sub–centers have emerged since 1981, the role of the CBD as a provider of high–order services such as FIRE has shifted into the sub–centers. We also found that the polycentric urban form in Seoul makes average commuting distance longer.

Intrametropolitan Patterns of High-order Business Service Location: A Comparative Study of Seventeen Sectors in Ile-de-France

The location of high-order service sectors outside traditional CBDs can be taken as a sign of the CBD's decline and there is evidence that such a process is occurring. However, all evidence does not point this way. In this paper, we study the Paris region in order to explore the location patterns of 17 distinct high-order business service sectors. The location patterns of high-order business services are found to be complex, each sector behaving differently and each sector displaying combinations of concentration and dispersal. Hypotheses are put forward relating the various interlocking patterns to the markets (producer-consumer; local-global), to the internal structure (large-small establishments, local branches, back-offices, small consultancies) and to the nature (technical-non-technical) of each sector.

Agglomeration and Dispersion of High-order Service Employment in the Montreal Metropolitan Region, 1981-96

Much of the recent urban literature on suburban employment centres has neglected the role of high-order services, perhaps the principal component of 'edge cities', in the creation of the evolving multinucleated metropolitan structure. This paper specifically explores the role of high-order services in this process. We use employment by place-of-work data at the census-tract level to examine the changing intrametropolitan geography of employment in four finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) services and eight business services in the Montreal area over the period 1981-96. We find evidence of central business district (CBD) decline in relative, but not absolute, terms. The resulting decentralisation has clearly assumed the form of polycentricity rather than of generalised dispersion. In spite of recent advances in telecommunications technologies, agglomeration economies continue to exert an important impact upon intrametropolitan location.