An Empirical Study of Container Terminal’s Service Attributes

Jing Lu, Xiaoxing Gong, Lei Wang

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DOI: 10.4236/jssm.2011.41013                

Abstract

This paper empirically evaluates container terminal service attributes from shipping lines and shipping agencies’ perspective. Some methods are applied for study, such as Internal-Consistency Reliability, Factor Analysis, Cluster Analysis, Importance-Satisfaction Analysis and analysis of variance. The results suggest that customers perceive reliability of the agreed vessel sailing time to be the most important container terminal service attribute, followed by custom declaration efficiency, loading and discharging efficiency, port cost and berth availability. While quality of port facility is the most satisfactory service attribute. Based on the concept of market segmentation, we employed cluster analysis to classify customers of container terminal into three segments, namely port cost oriented firms, port facilities and equipments oriented firms, and service efficiency and IT service oriented firms. Theoretical and practical implications of the research findings are discussed.

Keywords

Cluster Analysis, Container Terminals, Market Segmentation

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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