CARRIER SELECTION AND ORDER ALLOCATION IN E-COMMERCE: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH WITH ENTROPY–TOPSIS AND OPTIMIZATION

The growth of e-commerce has intensified the complexity of logistics operations, especially in the management of distribution by multiple carriers. In this context, this work proposes a decision support model for carrier selection and order allocation, integrating the Entropy-TOPSIS method and an optimization model. The approach considers operational and managerial criteria for evaluating the alternatives, using the entropy method to define weights and TOPSIS for ranking. Next, a logarithmic utility function-based optimization model is applied to define the distribution of demand under operational constraints. The model was applied to a real case study of e-commerce, evidencing the relevance of managerial criteria in the differentiation of carriers and the influence of capacity constraints on order allocation. The results indicate that the integration between multicriteria evaluation and optimization contributes to decisions that are more adherent to operational conditions.