Pricing strategies for logistics robot sharing platforms

Sharing platforms play a key role in the development of the sharing economy. This paper considers a logistics robot sharing platform comprising logistics robot providers and customers that need to rent robots. We develop an analytical model to investigate pricing strategies of a sharing platform, incorporating service response speed and additional services. Afterward, we examine the impact and value of the logistics robot sharing platform. We interestingly find that a high service response speed does not necessarily bring benefits to the platform. In addition, when customers are sensitive to the additional services, despite the increased cost of providing additional services, the platform can still profit from them. Finally, we generate additional insights by exploring two extended models, namely (i) the model with endogenous additional services, and (ii) the case considering the service response speed.