Competitive Strength Research Of Port Of Laizhou

As the integration process of global economy accelerating, the economic bondbetween different parts of the world becomes much tighter than any era before. Andthe reliance on logistics shows its importance for economic development. As the mainlogistics manner for international trade, maritime transportation is being more andmore stressed to by many countries. Also port is attached much importance for itsjunction role in logistics chain. So consequent competitions between ports areunavoidable and become keener and keener. Competitions exist between port groupsand also inside port group. The port group of Shandong peninsular is one of thelargest port groups in China and has many environmental and economic advantages,therefore port in this group faces intensive competition between each other.On January4^th2011, Development Plan of Shandong Peninsular Blue Economic Areawas replied by central government of China, which meant this plan was upgraded tonational strategy. Port on Shandong peninsular is facing a good opportunity for futuredevelopment. The plan proposes to build a northeast Asia shipping centre based on theport of Qingdao, which will bring a momentum to the construction of ports onShandong peninsular. Meanwhile we should see the expansion of the existing portswill worsen the current intensive competition. In such a situation, the small andmedium ports which have a hard time will need a full and accurate evaluation on theircompetitiveness strength to find their own position in market and their own strategyfor development, so as not to be eliminated in future market competition. Before the specific analysis on the competitiveness of Port of Laizhou, this paper firstsummarized all the past research outcome of this theme, and also introduced somebasic theories about port competition and assessment for the following discussion.The competition among ports is different with it among other kinds of enterprise,because port has some characteristics of public product. The market of port is not aperfectly competitive market and it is to some extent like an oligopolistic market. Alsothis paper has a few paragraphs to discuss the model and index system to find a propermodel for this case and establish a reasonable index system, both of which are crucialfor a comprehensive and objective research.The subject of this research is the port of Laizhou located at the coast of the LaizhouBay. It is one of the many medium and small ports on Shandong peninsular, belongingto China Oversea Development Group, surrounded by three large ports: Qingdao Port,Rizhao Port and Yantai Port. Laizhou port faces intensive competition with so manybig and small ports around and difficulties in surviving in such a circumstance, and itis a very typical medium and small port in China has representativeness for research.As for the approach, this paper first uses SWOT to analyze the current competitivesituation and identify the factors impacting the competitiveness strength, then itcombines fuzzy math with the theory of AHP to set forward a fuzzy overall evaluationmodel for this evaluation of competitiveness of ports. After evaluation, this paperanalyzes the out come and gives recommendations for the development strategies ofthe port of Laizhou. Through this case, this paper also intends to provide a referencefor future research of general development strategies of medium and small ports inChina.