A Empirical Study on the Effects of the Factors of CRM on the Business Performance of the Container Shipping Companies Based on BSC Perspective
Park, You-Kyung
Department of Port Logistics
Graduate School of Maritime Industrial Studies
Korea Maritime University
The several shipping research institutes expect that container liner industry will show recovery trend later this year while the recession has been continued since last global financial crisis in 2008 triggered by Lehman Brothers Holding Inc.'s moratorium. In spite of this positive outlook, container shipping companies do not feel better yet.
Most container shipping companies had ordered lots of new vessels competitively in boom period to secure the high position in the market without foreseeing the global financial crisis. But vessels were supplied after 2009 due to time lag, and it has caused excess supply in the shipping market. The competition among the liners to gain the shipments have been deepening owing to imbalance between demand and supply.
Liners are trying to reduce operational cost by up-sizing vessels and expansion of the global alliance. To realize the economy of scale, the global alliances among the shipping container companies become mandatory trend. Recently, top two global shipping companies, Mearsk and MSC have announced the formation of new alliance called as 2M, and French shipping container lines, CMA-CGM also has announced that they'll compose OCEAN3 alliance with CSCL and UASC. After composition of two new alliances, the four global alliances will lead the market including existing CKYHE(COSCO, K-Line, Yangming, Hanjin Shipping, Evergreen) and G6(Hyundai Merchant Marine, APL. MOL, Hapag-Lloyd, NYK, OOCL). Those four global alliances will compete to survive.
The expansion of global alliance means that the shipping service of each carrier become the same quality, the only freight could be an option to be selected by customers. It also means that most carriers will be dropped out from the cost competition except some of mega carriers which are making the profit at this point.
Under the this circumstance, liners need to establish customer oriented strategy newly to retain the loyal customers who are willing to pay the freight for the high quality of services.
So this study is suggesting that container shipping companies adopt CRM( Customer relationship Management) to develop a differentiated services.
The purpose of this study is to find the effect of the factors of CRM on the Business Performance of the Container Shipping Companies Based on BSC Perspective. The survey has been carried out targeting the staff of container shipping companies to measure variable derived from advanced research and analyzed the collected data with Multiple Regression and Factor Analysis of SPSS package.
As a result of survey, the three factors (process efficiency/quality of information, customer interaction/participation of end users, securing experts) affect financial and non-financial business performance of the container shipping companies and the factor of utilization of information system affect financial and non-financial business performance partially and the factor of integration of system affect non-financial business performance partially.
This study could be a guideline for those companies who are hesitating to adopt CRM at current due to difficulties of validating profitability in a short term. In a long term view, container shipping companies should implement CRM with focusing on those factors. It will be a solution for container shipping companies to survive in the age of limitless competition successfully.