The growing healthy relation among shippers and Third-Party Logistics (3PL) services providers boosts logistics services expansion. About 20% growth has been witnessed in logistics outsourcing globally. Seeing the market potential, many 3PL services providers are eager to venture their massive...

A buyer engages a procurement service provider (PSP) to short-list pre-screened suppliers for final selection. The PSP can exert costly effort to include promising candidates that have a higher probability to be deemed qualified by the buyer. The buyer optimizes two key decision variables in her...