Competitiveness Express Delivery

Transportation Research Part E 45 (2009) 321–334

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Transportation Research Part E journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tre

Evaluating competitiveness of air cargo express services
Yonghwa Park a,*, Jung Kyu Choi b, Anming Zhang c a b c Asia Pacific School of Logistics, Inha University, Incheon 402-751, Republic of Korea
Department of Aviation, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Canada

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Keywords:
Air cargo express services
Integrators
Competitiveness
Service factors
Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
Importance–performance analysis

a b s t r a c t
This paper explores the relative importance of factors that influence the adoption of air express delivery service, and evaluates the competitiveness of air cargo express carriers in the Korean market. Our AHP analysis shows that accuracy and promptness are the two most influential factors to competitiveness, and that DHL is most competitive in the
Korean market, followed by FedEx, TNT, EMS, and UPS. We further examine both the factor importance and carriers’ competitiveness from the perspective of service users. While accuracy and promptness remain as important factors, price becomes the most important factor. Finally, an importance–performance analysis for each carrier is conduced, and managerial implications are drawn.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In the contemporary globalizing economy where the small quantity production of various components and products and the associated frequent delivery are typical, economy of time has assumed immense importance for business. It is no exaggeration to say that saving time in a company’s supply chain is a key to its success in the market place. Furthermore, a growing community of e-commerce retailers have begun to rely on strategically located ‘‘fulfillment centers” to enable speedy and economical delivery of

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