An Efficient CoD Management Using Semaphore in Online Retail System

ABSTRACT

Electronic commerce (E-commerce) along with online shopping is rapidly increasing now-a-days specially in current scenario of COVID 19 pandemic. Such immensely expanding online marketing creates a plethora of opportunities for the companies to trade wider on the globe as well as enabling the customers to avail better products at their increased convenience. In this paper, we have addressed the affects of financial loss related to the return and replacement policy of online shopping particularly in Cash-on-Delivery (CoD) payment method. We have proposed a software solution using semaphore programming tool for the efficient management of CoD payment method. Analysing the customer’s previous transaction records, the proposed method determines suitable policy for the return and replacement option of the concerned customer. The objective is to minimize the financial loss for an unnecessary cancellation and replacement policy without hampering customers’ interest. Hence we have proposed an algorithm for efficient CoD management. The proposed algorithm uses counting semaphore to implement a customer reputation variable which will help the companies to keep track of each customer for each transaction precisely and determine a suitable penalty policy for the return and replacement option of the said customer. The working principle is demonstrated through a flow chart. We have performed extensive simulations in python to establish the novelty of the proposed approach. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.