A study of the influence of sustainable management activities on customer satisfaction and long-term orientation in the shipping industry: evidence from users of Korean flagged shipping service

Abstract

Since the concept of sustainability emerged as a new business paradigm, sustainable management has become one of the main topics among academic researchers and business practitioners. It is widely agreed that supply chain capabilities play a pivotal role in meeting customers' needs better through well-balanced integration of green marketing and eco-friendly SCM. However, many of previous studies mainly focused on the environmental aspect of sustainable management, lacking of comprehensive insight into its impact on customer relationship. Aiming to fill this literature gap, this paper empirically investigates the influence of sustainable management activities (SMA) on customer satisfaction (CS) and long-term orientation (LTO). The data were collected from 214 users of Korean flagged shipping service (shippers, freight forwarders and third party logistics service providers in Korea) and structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed to test the hypothesised relationships. The findings in this study are expected to contribute to establishing the strategy for effective sustainable management to enhance customer satisfaction and retention.