A Comparison Study between Korean and Foreign Shipping Lines on Logistics Service Attributes and Capability

국적선사와 외국적선사의 물류서비스 속성과 역량에 관한 비교 연구

In order to obtain and maintain competitive advantage, under rapidly changing maritime environment, liners should make efforts to reinforce their logistics service capabilities. Most of all, for this, shipping lines should accurately recognize and evaluate their logistics service attributes. In the present research, various logistics service attributes for ocean carriers were selected from previous studies and the observed data for 6 main service attributes were collected through a questionnaire survey to 31 maritime experts. Moreover, shipping lines' relative logistics service capabilities were measured by an additional survey process. The comparative gravity between core evaluation factors were measured by AHP technique and the relative capability levels of 2 Korean liners and 5 foreign shipping companies were assessed by utilizing a fuzzy model. The empirical result presents that Korean liners are superior at customer service capability but inferior at freight rate competitiveness. This research shows that Korean liners are ranked at high position for overall logistics service capabilities and focusing on the differentiation strategy but not on the cost related strategy.