FACTORS INFLUENCING THE SELECTION OF MOTOR CARRIERS
Sompong SIRISOPONSILP
Assistant Professor
Department of Civil Engineering
Faculty of Engineering
Chulalongkorn University
Phayathai Road, Bangkok 10330
Thailand
Fax: +66-02-251-7304
E-mail: sompong.si@chula.ac.th
Abstract: The research attempts to explore the relative importance of service attributes as
perceived by shippers in selecting motor carriers. The study focuses on the delivery of
automotive parts and consumer goods and involves three stages of survey. The first stage
survey is conducted to develop an initial list of important service features. In the second
stage survey, shippers are asked to indicate the degree of perceived importance and
satisfaction associated with each service feature in the list. The observed scores are analyzed
to identify a small number of service features that need carriers' immediate attention. The
third stage survey applies the conjoint analysis to derive relative importance of these critical
attributes by investigating shippers' stated choices in a number of binary choice settings. The
findings via both direct questioning and conjoint analysis techniques agree that "reliability of
on-time delivery" is perceived as the most important decision determinant in purchasing
trucking services.
Key Words: motor carriers, carrier selection, conjoint analysis
1. INTRODUCTION
Truck transportation has overwhelmingly dominated freight transportation in Thailand. Over
90% of domestic freight movement measured in ton-kilometers have traditionally been
served by trucks. Over almost 10 years prior to 1997, the nation experienced an
unprecedented economic boom and the supply of motor carrier services was enormously
expanded to cater the ever-increasing needs for the services. Unfortunately, following the
economic bust occurred in 1997, the demand for trucking services abruptly and substantially
shrunk while the carriers were unable to size down their service capacity fast enough to
match the reduced demand. Given the heavily excessive supply of trucking services, the
competition among motor carriers has become very fierce and motor carriers have been
struggling to find ways to enhance their competitive positions. To deal with current intense
competitive pressures, carriers must be able to customize services to suit customer
requirements at competitive rates. Thorough appreciation of shippers' logistics needs and
about the critical criteria used by shippers in selecting motor carriers is therefore crucial to
carriers' long-term business success.
Although the investigation of criteria used by shippers in purchasing trucking services has
attracted great attention of researchers elsewhere, there has been no in-depth study ever
attempting to explore the carrier selection criteria in Thailand. There is certainly a serious
need for systematic studies that shed light into service attributes crucially relevant to the
selection of motor carriers in Thailand. The findings of these studies would be highly
beneficial to both motor carriers and shippers. The knowledge about the shippers' service
priorities would definitely be useful for carriers in designing their service offerings. As
shippers have at their choice the type of motor carrier services that truly suits their logistics
needs, they should be able to significantly reduce their logistics cost and improve customer
satisfaction.
Our study represents an exercise to fill the gap between prevalent industry needs and the
available research works. The purpose of this study is to determine the relative importance of
key service attributes as perceived by shippers in selecting trucking services. In designing
the study, we separate shippers into two groups that likely exhibit different requirements with
respect to distribution services. The first group represents the producers of consumer goods
who distribute their products to trading firms who in turn offer the goods to satisfy the
Thitima WONGINTA
Former Graduate Student
Department of Civil Engineering
Faculty of Engineering
Chulalongkorn University
Phayathai Road, Bangkok 10330
Thailand
Fax: +66-02-251-7304
E-mail: t_wonginta@hotmail.com
Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol.5, October, 2003
consumption needs of consumers. The second group represents the suppliers of industrial
goods who provide materials or parts to serve production activities in downstream
manufacturers. Given the limited time and budget made available to our study, industrial
goods to be covered in the study include only the automotive parts.