Ocean container carrier selection in North Western Europe - qualitative empirical research towards a discrete choice model

Although widely recognized as commoditized services there have been ongoing discussions among researchers and practitioners if container liner shipping was a purely price-driven industry or if certain quality of service indicators also play significant roles when shippers decide about container carriers. Especially with the background of globalization and simultaneous integration of supply chains service parameters such as transit time, reliability, customer service, information services, or environmental aspects could be expected to rise in importance. Existing literature has covered carrier selection criteria in various surveys asking shippers to rate or rank selection criteria, but rarely modeled the final impact of criteria on the selection decision or even expected market shares of liner services. This paper covers two steps towards an examination of the ocean container carrier selection in Northern Europe in the latter manner. First, ocean carrier selection literature is reviewed to long-list and rank possible carrier selection criteria comprehensively. Second, results of qualitative empirical research with more than twenty container shippers and carriers are presented to validate and substantiate a discrete choice analysis approach (DCA) for further examination of the ocean container carrier decision. Interviews are used to decompose and map the various processes that lead to container bookings, identify relevant market segments, and short-list selection criteria to be examined in the DCA.