A significant change of the environment surrounding container ports comes to be a chance with a crisis. While the effort to turn threats into opportunities is being made in various ways, it is more important to hold a dominant position through service differentiation. To make service differentiation, it is necessary to understand the customer needs basically. The customer needs are to be evaluated objectively and the scale and measurement methods should be developed to measurement.
This thesis developed the scale to measure the quality of the service for the container ports. So this thesis examined the preceding studies and drew service elements through interviews with the expert group. And it posed questions to the major container liners. On the basis of the research data, the process of the scale refinement was passed through exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, validity analysis, and exploratory correlation analysis.
Finally 20 service items is decided. A dimension of service quality through factor analysis presented 4 factors(Speediness, Exactness, Safety and Convenience): 4 items for Speediness, 4 items for Exactness, 4 items for Safety and 8 items for Convenience. They are comprised of the items for the service quality measure. These items are the demands of the container liners who are the major clients of the container ports.
Measuring the service quality is ultimately to develop the quality of the service for customers. This study presented the way to improve the service substantially with the measurement of the service quality in the container ports, Namely, it connected and analyzed the scale of the service quality and the QFD(Quality Function Deployment) model. So this study visibly represented the service plans to improve the quality of the service through HOQ(House of Quality).
The visible service plans through HOQ reflected the customer needs basically. And this thesis developed the scale of the service quality. The major clients of the container ports appraised the relationship between the service quality items and service processes, and the service performance of the Busan port and the competitors(Tokyo port, Shanghai port) with the importance of items for the service quality measure. The QFD model are analyzed on the basis of Busan port.
The results of this thesis provided following implications in the concrete. First, this study developed the scale to measure the service quality of the container ports. These scale reflected the needs of the container liners who are the major clients of the container ports. Therefore, container ports can understand the needs of the customers actually.
Secondly, this thesis compared the performance of Tokyo port and Shanghai port on the basis of the service performance in Busan port. It provided the strategic issues to acquire competitive advantage in fierce competition. So Busan port is necessary to keep the service items highly evaluated and make an effort to upgrade the ones lowly evaluated.
Finally, This study clarified the relationship between the service quality scales and the service processes. And then it drew priority and importance of the service process. This study provides the concrete and significant methods to improve the quality of service for container ports. Therefore, container ports can design a plan to improve the quality of the service according to the priority of the service process.