A Literature Review on Smart Technologies and Logistics

The emergence of smart technologies has brought substantial changes in logistics. Hence, understanding smart technologies applied in logistics has become critical for practitioners and scholars to make smart technologies better empower logistics activities. Because research on this issue is new and largely fragmented, it will be theoretically essential to evaluate what has been studied and derive meaningful insights through a literature review. In this study, we conduct a mixed-method literature review of smart technologies in logistics. We classify these studies by topic modeling and identify important research domains and methods. More importantly, we draw upon the task-technology fit theory and logistics activities process to propose a multi-level theoretical framework in smart technologies in logistics for understanding the current status in research. We believe that this framework can provide a valuable basis for future logistics research.