Abstract
This paper investigates freight forwarders’ perceived satisfaction on service attributes of ocean carriers and their choice behaviors. The mail surveys were conducted to freight forwarders, providing services between Taiwan and the United States. This research employs factor analysis to combine a large number of service attributes into few latent factors and the multinomial logit model to examine ocean carrier choice by freight forwarders. The result of factor analysis obtained three factors, namely speed/reliability, safety/empathy and convenience. The estimation results of the multinomial logit model reveal that transit time, frequency of sailing, record of cargo delay, freight rate and latent service quality factors are the significant variables influencing the choice of ocean carriers. Freight forwarders are sensitive to the changes in service frequency and transit time, indicated by the values of direct elasticities. The findings provide useful insights into ocean carrier choice behaviors by forwarders.
