Ocean carrier selection

Abstract

Competition nowadays in the business world is primarily between supply chains, and the ocean transportation, probably acting as the longest link between two stages, exerts a great influence on the overall performance of the supply chain systems. While ocean carrier selection criteria have been examined extensively by previous scholars, scarce literature was found to investigate this topic in the context of supply chain management.

To address this research gap, this paper aims to come up with a list of ocean carrier selection criteria from shippers’ / freight forwarders’ perspective by combining the existing ocean carrier selection criteria as discussed in the previous literature and some new critical criteria to be proposed in this paper in consideration of supply chain management. AHP method will be employed to determine the relative importance of the ocean carrier selection criteria as perceived by the shippers and freight forwarders, following by a detailed discuss on the major findings on selection criteria of ocean container carriers and a comparison among the three shipping market sectors, namely container shipping industry, dry bulk shipping industry and wet bulk shipping industry.

For the purpose of this paper, special emphasis will be given to the container shipping industry, though the other two market sectors, i.e., dry bulk shipping and wet bulk shipping will also be covered briefly.