An Analytic Hierarchy Process-Based Survey To Investigate The Impact Of Terminals’ Service Attributes On Attracting Shipping Lines

Abstract

Freight movement overseas through ports/terminals around the world plays a huge role in the global supply chain. Improving ports/terminals performance has a positive impact on the overall gross domestic product as well as neighbouring regions. Accordingly, port authorities and terminal operators are keen to improve the quality of the services they offer to increase the number of services calling ports (strings) and the cargo volumes at their terminals. As such, it is important to understand the behaviour of shippers and the preferences of liners, which opens the way to ask the question, what are the important factors that attract liners to a specific port/terminal? To contribute to this question, this study aims to understand the determinants of liners’ terminal choice behaviour using an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-based survey. AHP is a structured technique for organizing and analyzing complex decisions based on mathematics and psychology. It is considered a prescriptive data analysis method that divides unstructured choices into several groups and organizes them into hierarchies. Expert’s and previous researches mentioned that low port dues, access of port facilities and port infrastructure are the most important factors control the choice of a port, on the other hand the outcomes of this research proved that, shipping lines and shippers were concerned more with “Port Efficiency” factor which indicates that liners and shippers recently concerned with the level of congestion and the ship turnaround time, next factor is “Connectivity” which give a higher priorities to the ports that has better connectivity to dry ports, storage, and distribution centers. In addition, understanding the behaviour of different stakeholders plays a major role towards port resilience strategies to adapt to changing conditions and recover positively from unexpected circumstances like the Covid-19 pandemic, which will shorten the road to attaining sustainable ports and highlight required improvements.