An evaluation of ocean container carrier selection criteria: an Indian shipper's perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assist ocean container carriers in devising effective marketing strategies to attract and retain Indian shippers by letting them understand the list of criteria Indian shippers use in the carrier selection decisions and also the amount of importance they assign to each criterion during such decisions. Design/methodology/approach – To explore the criteria, review of transportation literature, customer satisfaction survey questionnaires of container carriers and SERVQUAL battery was undertaken. Telephonic interviews and focus group interview were also conducted for this purpose. In order to evaluate the criteria, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used. In the AHP, the pairwise comparisons were carried out by another focus group with the help of a questionnaire. For AHP calculations, the Expert Choice 11.5 software was used. Findings – Indian shippers use 45 criteria in the container carrier selection process and out of these, low freight is ranked as the most important criterion and pricing flexibility is the second most important one. In the list, these are the only two criteria found to be with more than 10 per cent importance. The least importance is given to five criteria: gifts and compliments, online booking, physical facilities, professional appearance and trade announcements which are weighed with 0.10 per cent importance. The paper has explored and added several new carrier selection criteria to the existing transportation literature. Practical implications – The paper enables container carriers to understand various criteria Indian shippers use in the container carrier selection decisions along with their relative importance in such decisions. It also helps container carriers to decide which criterion is to be given priority and which not while devising their marketing strategies for Indian market. This decision is vital to maximize shippers' satisfaction. Originality/value – The paper is the first ever carrier selection study undertaken in India and is expected to open up enormous scope for future research.