Growth and expansion of trade volume in the world economy has increased trade between countries. With expansion of globalization and trade growth, an increasingly greater proportion of this industry is becoming occupied by logistics.
Within this logistics environment, export/import companies as users of logistics services have delegated freight forwarders to perform as many logistics roles as shipping companies. Therefore, Freight forwarders are doing an important role in the provision of logistics.
The purpose of this study is to analyze how freight forwarders may find a way to remain competitive within the context of logistical subjects and to investigate the relationships between freight forwarder service quality, customer satisfaction and long-term orientation.
In summary, the empirical results of this study are as follows :
1) There are discrepancies between the 5 components of service quality ("Reliability", "Responsiveness", "Assurance", "Empathy", "Tangibles") in the use of SERVPERF scales as individual analysis tools in analyzing Freight forwarder service quality. Thus, the further development of more appropriate measurement tools for analyzing the characteristics of Freight forwarder servicing is required in the future.
2) Among the 5 components of service quality, the correlations of customer satisfaction with "Reliability", "Responsiveness", "Assurance" and "Empathy" are found to be positive. However, the correlation of customer satisfaction with "Tangibles" is found to be negative.
3) Among the 5 components of service quality, the correlations of long-term orientation with "Responsiveness" and "Tangibles" are found to be positive. However, the correlations of long-term orientation with "Reliability", "Assurance" and "Empathy" are found to be negative.
4) The correlation of customer satisfaction with long-term orientation is found to be positive.
This research as its focus had analyzed actual customers of freight forwarder services, however in future research, individually differentiated comparative analyses of perceived service quality on actual customers of freight forwarder services and other freight forwarders will be necessary.