OCEAN CARRIER SELECTION CRITERIA IN A NEW ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

This paper examines the used by eastern Canadian shippers to evaluate ocean container carriers, and discusses whether or not the basic carrier selection have altered to reflect changing competitive conditions in the global marketplace over the past seven years. This study finds that there has been little evolution in the that shippers view to be important in the selection decision but that the deterministic have changed. The salient service attributes sought in 1982 were frequency of sailings and cost of service, as all carriers were viewed to provide similar transit times because of similar routing structures. By 1989, carriers have improved their performance significantly on these four dimensions, but transit time had become the sole deterministic criterion on which carrier selection decisions are made. Performance on other had improved but significant differences between carriers were not perceived by shippers. This study underlines the importance of using a salience of criteria perspective by carrier marketers in developing strategic plans for servicing the new global marketplace.