Port choice and freight forwarders q Jose L. Tongzon * Graduate School of Logistics, Inha University, 253 Yonghyun-Dong, Nam-ku, Incheon 402-751, South Korea article info Article history: Received 8 July 2007 Received in revised form 17 February 2008 Accepted 20 February 2008 Keywords: Port choice Selection factors Freight forwarders Shippers Southeast Asia abstract In light of the growing supply chain power of 3PLs and very limited empirical studies on port choice from the freight forwarders’ perspective, this paper tries to evaluate the major factors influencing port choice from the Southeast Asian freight forwarders’ perspective, their decision-making style and port selection process and draw out some policy implica- tions for port operators and authorities. Efficiency is found to be the most important factor followed by shipping frequency, adequate infrastructure and location. Their selection pro- cess is complex and a two-stage process and supports the new approach that models ports within the framework of a supply chain. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Although ports are now considered an integral part of supply chains and should not be viewed by port users in isolation, 1 in many cases particularly in developing countries, ports are not yet well integrated with other elements in supply chains. It is therefore important to investigate empirically whether this is the case among the freight forwarders in Southeast Asia and as- sess the key factors that these major port users consider important in choosing their ports. An assessment of these factors from the freight forwarders’ perspective will be useful in providing an insight into how an effective port strategy should be designed. Moreover, there is scant empirical literature on the subject of port choice process particularly from the freight forwarders’ per- spective. In light of the increasing importance of port choice and the need to shed light on the decision-making process of freight forwarders in various regions [who value port selection factors differently from shippers (Murphy et al., 1992) and control a large share of transport flows (De Langen, 2007)], this paper tries to evaluate the major factors influencing port choice from the Southeast Asian freight forwarders’ perspective, their decision-making style and port selection process and draw out some policy implications for port operators and authorities. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 evaluates the major factors influencing port choice from the freight forwarders’ perspective; Section 3 looks at their decision-making style and port selection process, and Section 4 sum- marizes the main findings and implications for port operators and authorities. 1366-5545/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tre.2008.02.004 q This paper is an updated and revised version of the paper, Port Choice in a Competitive Environment: From the Shippers’ Perspective, presented at the International Association of Maritime Economists Annual Conference 2003, 3–5 September 2003, Pusan, Korea. The author is very grateful to the anonymous referee and the editor-in-chief of this journal for their very valuable comments and helpful suggestions on the earlier versions of this paper. Their feedbacks have certainly improved the paper. As usual, the author is solely responsible for any remaining errors and omissions in this paper. * Tel.: +82 32 8608234; fax: +82 32 8608226. E-mail addresses: jtongzon@inha.ac.kr, josetongzon@yahoo.com 1 Robinson (2002) articulated the view of ports as an element of a supply chain; Panayides and Song (2007) proposed and developed certain indicators to measure port supply chain orientation. Transportation Research Part E 45 (2009) 186–195 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Transportation Research Part E journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tre