Liner Companies Competitiveness And Service Quality Study Of The Relationship

When the shipping industry faces keen competition, the issue of how to promote service quality and achieve competitive advantage is an important issue to the ocean freight forwarders. This paper empirically evaluates the relationships between core competencies and service quality in the forwarding industry. Measurements regarding service quality are mainly based upon SERVQUAL, a theoretical model developed by Parasuraman, ZeithernI & Berry. Parasuraman et alargues that "gap of service quality" is the discrepancy between customers' expectancy toward service and what they actually received. The five factors of core competencies in the ocean freight forwarders are service integrity, service accuracy, frequency of sailing, responsiveness, and the establishment of reputation. For the shipper, the three factors of service quality are reliability, attentiveness, and reactivity. Twenty-three survey items build up the form which can be used to examine the service quality of the ocean freight forwarders in China.The research also made the following conclusions.-1. The ocean freight forwarders perceive the security and the accuracy of the cargos as the most important service attribute of core competencies, followed by accurate documentation, understanding of the customer needs, training of staff's specialized knowledge and skills, and telephone manner. The five most regarded attributes of service quality from the perspective of the shipper are accurate documentation, the security and the accuracy of the cargos, transit time, the training of staff's specialized knowledge and skills, and the professionalism of the personnel.2. The factors which have a significant influence on reliability are service integrity, service accuracy, frequency of sailing, and reputation in the industry. The factors which have a significant influence on attentiveness are service integrity, frequency of sailing, and industry reputation. The factors which have a significant influence on reactivity are service integrity and responsiveness.3. Theoretical analysis and empirical studies on the basis of this paper, a "professional" , "difference" and "market segmentation" and other strategies to enhance their core competitiveness.