As the circumstances surrounding world ports have changed rapidly, port competition to attract more cargoes is increasing fiercely. The emergence of global liner shipping companies has also meant that fewer ports of call are desired for the largest container vessels, meaning that ports have to try harder to compete for business against fewer customer in an augmented market place.
Fierce competition to attract the increasing container cargoes of the North China and the West Japan in North-East Asian region has caused main container ports of Korea, Japan, and China not only to invest enormous fund to modernize their port facilities but also to improve efficiency in port operation and management.
In this situation, port marketing is of immediate necessity in Korean container port in order to enhance port competitiveness in the North-East Asian region.
Nevertheless, the studies on port marketing have not been conducted enough and the existing studies related have had the limitation not doing empirical analysis but tried to a theoretical approach.
This study, therefore, aims to establish the feasible marketing strategies to attract (transshipment) container cargoes in the North-East Asian region by empirical analysis .
To tackle this goal, first of all, this paper reviews a theoretical background and the existing literatures on port marketing. it, then, proposes marketing situation of Busan container terminals and the marketing benchmarking of advanced container ports in the world. Finally, it presents marketing mix strategy, customer discrimination strategy, competition strategy among their ports in North-East Asian region, and marketing strategy to attract transshipment cargoes.
The major output of the research is as follows:
First, Busan container Terminals are required to focus on Product(Facilities and Service)mix and PlaceㆍPromotion mix of the Marketing Mix and the most important marketing strategies to attract transshipment cargoes among its ports in North-East Asian region are to adjust port tariff and free storage period with flexibility.
Second, customer positioning strategy shows that Busan port to attract transshipment cargoes is required to adjust free storage period with flexibility for liner shipping companies using Gwangyang and HongKong ports, need to operate port tariff with flexibility for Freight Forwarder using Busan port mainly, and need to promote superiority of location for liner shipping companies using Busan port mainly.
Third, Price-Demand function of Busan port between main competitive ports in North-East Asian region that is derived from marketing strategies to attract transshipment cargoes, helps marketing manager to fix scientifically port price as understanding the change of demand quantity.