In [2] N.

Viswanadham, Viswanathan Vinod Kumar & Roshan Gaonkar, describes how with the
emergence of Internet as a medium of choice for consumer shopping, there is lot of ways for the
fulfilment i.e. there are many questions that should be answered before arriving at the decision of
what a particular company should do like What are the volumes? What are the customer
expectations? What capabilities are needed to satisfy them? What are the existing assets and
capabilities? Does the product require special handling? Can the value-chain resulting from the
chosen method support a viable business etc.

Different Modes of Fulfilment used:

1. In-house Fulfilment: In-house fulfilment, or self-fulfilment, refers to when businesses

manage their own warehouse and shipping operations, typically with their own facility,
equipment and staff. This method is best for established businesses or businesses that want
total control over their end-to-end operations. 
2.  Outsourced Fulfilment: Companies can outsource order fulfilment by using fulfilment
service providers or 3PL (third-party logistics) companies. Fulfilment service companies
specialize in inventory management, order processing, order management, and shipping.
This is a good option for businesses that want to save time by not handling these operations
in-house.
3.  Drop Shipping: Suppliers handle every step of the order fulfilment process, shipping orders
directly to customers and billing the company for the products they sell. Drop shipping is a
good option for start-up ecommerce businesses or any online business that doesn’t want to
purchase wholesale products upfront. 

The professor tried formulating retail logistics problem. In particular, considered the following
scenario where the e-tailer owns a sophisticated warehouse storing its goods. Goods are dispatched
to customers based on the orders received through the e-tailers web site.

The main conclusions of the model on the fulfilment strategy to be used are as follows:

For low values of demand, fulfilment should be done in-house and for high values dropshipping
should be used, when capacity is very limited dropshipping should be used and when capacity is not
a constraint fulfilment should be done in-house, Low outsourcing costs make outsourcing an equal
with in-house fulfilment in the fulfilment process etc.

[2] OPTIMAL RETAIL ORDER FULFILMENT STRATEGIES N. Viswanadham, Viswanathan Vinod Kumar &
Roshan Gaonkar.