Service Quality Assessment Based on Customer Satisfaction in International Freight Forwarding Industry: An Empirical Study in East Asia

The purpose of this paper is to improve service quality of freight forwarders and explore the quality function deployment (QFD) in terms of quality management technique. The freight forwarder business is mainly characterized by a lower capital investment and an entry barrier compared with a shipping line. Freight forwarders usually work closely with shipping or airline companies as intermediary agents and their major customers are small or medium size manufactures or traders. Providing the quality service to enhance customer satisfaction is the key mission since every company provides similar service and the competition is extremely severe, especially after the global economic crisis. The QFD is one of the distinctive procedures to describe the requirements of a customer and transform them into managerial missions by cross-relations evaluation between customer requirements and technical measures. The relative weight of each customer requirement would be calculated by applying fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). Furthermore, the feature of the study by using a QFD approach would not only identify key technical measures but also explore meaningful business solutions as a direction of quality improvement. The empirical study is performed to investigate service quality of the freight forwarding industry by focusing on a group of anonymous leading forwarders in East Asia. In conclusion, the authors explore the empirical result and managerial meaning for decision making.

• Record URL:
  http://www.icms.polyu.edu.hk/Proceedings/Proceedings%20of%20IFSPA%202013.pdf
• 
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/isbn/9789623677677
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract reprinted with permission of Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
• Corporate Authors:

  Hong Kong Polytechnic University

  Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies
  Tung International Centre for Maritime Studies
  Hong Kong,   China 
• Authors:
  • Huang, Sheng Teng
  • Bulut, Emrah
  • Duru, Okan
  • Yoshida, Shigeru
• Conference:
  • International Forum on Shipping, Ports and Airports (IFSPA) 2013: Trade, Supply Chain Activities and Transport: Contemporary Logistics and Maritime Issues
  • Location: Hong Kong , China
  • Date: 2013-6-3 to 2013-6-5
• Publication Date: 2013-8

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 132-144
• Monograph Title: Proceedings of the International Forum on Shipping, Ports and Airports (IFSPA) 2013: Trade, Supply Chain Activities and Transport: Contemporary Logistics and Maritime Issues

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Analytic hierarchy process; Customer satisfaction; Freight forwarders; Quality of service; Ship lines
• Uncontrolled Terms: Quality function deployment
• Geographic Terms: East Asia
• Subject Areas: Freight Transportation; Marine Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01495931
• Record Type: Publication
• ISBN: 9789623677677
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Oct 14 2013 4:28PM