항만물류 서비스품질과 관계품질이 관계지속의도에 미치는 영향

Abstract

Absract As the environment for shipping and ports changes rapidly, major factors of port competitiveness are also undergoing changes. This study proposes that Busan Port boosts its relation continuity intention with customers as part of efforts to survive the cutthroat competition among regions and countries and to gain a competitive advantage over rivals. The establishment of such a relation continuity intention is based not only on a number of study results showing that raising customer loyalty enables ports to achieve a competitive advantage, but also on an assessment that from a defensive marketing point of view, the source of port competitiveness depends more on preventing existing customers from severing relations than creating new clients. In addition, most of the existing demand-oriented studies on the port logistics service quality have been made with management and staff of shipping companies, their agencies, or shippers and forwarders, but this study focuses on captains who directly experience and perceive the port logistics service. The selection of captains is grounded on the fact that captains, through whom shipping companies use port services, are in a position to well assess the quality of port services, most of which are provided at container terminals playing a key role in the port logistics. Accordingly, the purpose of this study based on a survey of captains of liners calling at Busan Port is to examine how intangible assets of relation quality, such as customer satisfaction, trust and commitment with the port logistics service quality, contribute to forming relation continuity intention. The results and suggestions of this study are summarized as follows. First, it has expanded the path of influence by adding customer trust and commitment to the paradigm of port logistics service quality and customer satisfaction, which affects customer loyalty and relation continuity intention. Secondly, this study has established five scales - tangibles, speediness, responsiveness, reliability and safety - to measure the port logistics service quality on the basis of existing studies. And it has adopted a point of view that sees each scale of service quality as an element of overall service quality, not a predisposing factor. Thirdly, safety has been found to have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction, followed by reliability and speediness. Shipping companies as major port customers, have access to port logistics service via vessels which call at the Port to load and unload consigned cargo in a safe, accurate and quick way. Therefore, it has been found that captains recognize safety, reliability and speediness as major factors for the port logistics service quality. Fourthly, an analysis of the impact of service quality factors on trust has shown that safety, which has influenced customer satisfaction the most, has a meaningful effect on customer trust. Fifthly, customer satisfaction has been found have a positive influence on trust and commitment. Sixthly, trust and commitment pertaining to relation quality has been found to have a direct positive impact on relation continuity intention. But unlike previous studies showing that customer satisfaction has a direct positive impact on customer loyalty, a hypothesis that customer satisfaction would have a positive impact on relation continuity intention has failed to win support. In conclusion, this study found that captains feel satisfaction directly by perceiving and experiencing the factors for the port logistics service quality, and that a continuing sense of satisfaction leads to trust and commitment, creating the final variable of relation continuity intention. According to this outcome, a more strategic approach to the promotion of customer trust and commitment is needed as a means of creating relation continuity intention. However, this study has covered only captains of container ships as liners which regularly use the Port's container terminals, so it is difficult to apply its results to the overall quality of the Port's logistics service. Therefore, future studies need to survey captains of bulk carriers, general cargo ships, tankers and all other tramps in order to measure the overall quality of its logistics service and find out service quality factors tailored to each customer.