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ABSTRACT
Freight carrier selection is one of the important activities in supply chain management since transportation has strong impact on cost, efficiency, ability to deliver the product to customer on time, and customer satisfaction. At the same time, it is also important for freight carrier to understand how its customers (shippers) select carrier. By identifying selection criteria, freight carrier will be able to focus its resources and efforts to improve the areas that are more important for customer. Japanese automotive company in Thailand is one of the most important groups of customer for ocean freight carrier due to high shipment volumes both in importing parts to assemble and exporting vehicles to other countries. Thus, the objective of this paper is to identify criteria that Japanese automotive companies consider in selecting ocean freight carrier. Questionnaire was distributed to logistics staff who work in Japanese automotive companies in order to identify the criteria that they use in selecting ocean carrier and also evaluate the important level of each criteria. Five selection criteria are identified which include reliability of service, quality of service, cost, after-sale service, and perceived capability. The result shows that after-sale service is the most influential factor affecting the ocean carrier, followed by reliability of service. These findings are beneficial for ocean freight carrier in order to develop strategy to attract and retain its customers. Focusing solely on service price (cost) is not enough; carrier should place more attention to train its people and focus on customer-oriented strategy in order to win the competition.
1. INTRODUCTION
Due to global financial crisis since 2008 together with appreciate value of Thai Baht against U.S dollar in 2013, Thailand export value has been decreased both in terms of value and growth percentage. The growth rate was at negative 3.72 percent in the second quarter of 2013, and the value of exporting was at 3.34 billion Baht compared to 3.46 billion in 2012. The decline in exporting unarguably affects demand for freight transportation especially sea transportation since demand for transportation is a derived demand. In addition, because of innovation in ship technology, vessel size is increased in order to achieve economy of scale. Unfortunately, it is also implied that the supply side of transportation (carrier capacity) starts...