The once thriving American textile industry has been offshored almost entirely. The few domestic mills that remain tend to be specialized; there is no dominant player. As the global environment becomes increasingly unpredictable, the benefits of offshoring are lessening. Raising concerns over sustainability, employee welfare and intellectual property have the potential to shift the current pattern of offshoring. Impulsive tariffs and rising international wages add to the uncertainty. To eliminate many of these concerns, new textile mills should be developed in the United States. Many businesses have expressed desire and need for a new American mill to help them meet their goals. Due to strict regulations, domestic production is inherently more environmentally and socially proactive. In order for this mill to succeed, it must be based on automation and sustainable practices.

To begin our creative project/thesis we sought out a project that would allow us to combine our interests in Supply Chain and Marketing. We chose to develop a drop-shipping business and analyze the effects that marketing had on our product sales. After reading and researching multiple potential products, we chose to begin by selling Sea Turtle Charm Bracelets. After selecting our product we created a webpage where we would be able sell it. Once we established a platform, we began to test different marketing tactics to observe the impact that they had on sales. The primary objective of this thesis was to test and analyze different marketing strategies and see which one would have the largest positive impact on sales. We researched different social media platforms and discussed how to best market the website so that we could increase traffic to our webpage and generate higher sales. We implemented different marketing strategies and sent out two surveys, through Qualtrics and Google Forms to understand the relationship between social media marketing and a consumer's likelihood to purchase. This thesis presents the development of a fully functional drop-shipping business, our approaches to marketing, the methodology behind the survey creation, obstacles and challenges we faced along the way, and the overall sales results that concluded our product was not suitable for consistent, long term sales. Through this project we have gained invaluable insight on how a drop-shipping business functions and the impacts that marketing has on it; looking towards the future we have decided to shut down our current business and utilize our knowledge on drop-shipping and marketing to create a new business which will sell items catered towards a broader customer base.

Innovation has been the cornerstone of Amazon’s business strategy and rise to success. After positioning itself as close as possible to the customer and facing new challenges with its logistics providers, Amazon has desperately tried to inhouse last-mile delivery as it slowly matures its shipping fleet. In response to the faster delivery promises that it made to its customers, Amazon developed two gig-economy-inspired business ventures, AmazonFlex and Delivery Businesses Partners, to satisfy growing demand in the short run and stunt rising shipping costs. However, in its attempt to regain control of its last-mile, Amazon undervalued the administrative burden needed to manage its contractors: chiefly to process packages quickly and maintain customer satisfaction. It also has not released AmazonFlex nationwide, as its platform is not robust enough to handle all the traffic generated by matching transactions or offer any data about the individualities of each delivery (building type, building access, safe parking, etc.). Even though Amazon Flex resembles the UberEats platform, Amazon does not capture customer responses on last-mile delivery specifically. It therefore has no way of gauging whether this gig-economy solution can offer the same on time delivery targets and equal care in package handling as seasoned carriers.

This paper analyzes why Amazon can further deploy its last mile by partnering with Uber for the short term. By utilizing Uber’s large transactional repository and subject matter expertise on meal delivery, Amazon can refine its short-term solutions, limit inherent risks, and maintain customer satisfaction. Uber stands to profit from the partnership by locking in the necessary demand volume to become profitable, while limiting its marketing expenses and lowering the cost per mile traveled. Uber Drivers will have more “jobs” available to remain logged into Uber’s platform and have the ability to execute multiple deliveries in parallel while having to drive less miles. Amazon already has the necessary physical infrastructure to dispatch packages and would barely need to adjust current operations, considering that all last-mile deliveries are executed by contractors in vans and standard sedans. Likewise, Uber would adapt quickly since its service-level monitoring of over 200,000 restaurants would be reduced to only one stakeholder and routes would often originate at the same point. Lastly, Amazon will not have to continue investing in additional equipment, as drivers will drive their own cars and utilize the Uber platform and its refined safety features.

The arrangement of this thesis is as follows: Chapter 1 will provide background information and list the complexities of last mile delivery. Chapter 2, Amazon’s Competitive Environment, will investigate Amazon’s external risks from a competitive analysis standpoint. Chapter 3 will cover how Amazon has leveraged the gig-economy to deliver its last-mile. Chapter 4 will dive into Uber’s threats and weak financial standing. Finally, Chapter 5 will conclude with the incentives and success metrics that support the proposed partnership.

I have been studying both Supply Chain Management and Business Sustainability during my undergraduate at Arizona State University. This paper has allowed me to further explore some of the topics that I was introduced to during my time studying at ASU. For my supply chain alternative thesis, I attended multiple interesting faculty research presentations in the Supply Chain department and wrote reflections on each. The presentations were used to help choose a topic to focus on in the rest of my thesis. It is the third research seminar that I attended by Barbara Flynn, titled Understanding Adaptation to a Sustainability Technology Innovation: Longitudinal Outcome Trajectories, that sparked my interest in further researching sustainability in supply chains. The second portion of this paper contains a literature review of papers and journals on the topic of sustainability within supply chains over the last decade. Studies on this topic are becoming more popular as concerns with global warming increase. My research mainly consisted of reading journals and articles on ways that sustainable practices can be applied to reduce the environmental impact of businesses. This paper focuses on recent sustainability trends found across different areas of the supply chain, including: supplier selection and engagement, manufacturing, building efficiency, and logistics.