Abstract
Service literature indicates that both service failure and service recovery have a strong impact on the business relationships between service providers and their customers. The purpose of this research is twofold: to explore and analyze the most common service failures and implemented recovery strategies in Turkish third party logistics service industry and examine their impact on business relationships. Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was used. Thus, information on critical incidents were collected from both third party logistics service providers (3PLs) and their customers, failures and recovery strategies were categorized and the impact of service failures and recovery strategies on future relationships between customers and 3PLs examined. The findings indicate that service failures are most frequently encountered in customer services and port operations and that symbolic service recovery is the most common recovery strategy implemented by third party logistics service providers. The findings also show that third party logistics service providers and carriers are the most common sources of failure in third party logistics services.
Highlights
The service market is steadily growing in industrialized countries and even though the products of service market actors are intangible and non-physical, they engage in physical distribution activities and make decisions (Ballou, 2004: 21)
This study aims to fill the aforementioned gaps in the relevant literature and present the most common service failures experienced by third party logistics service providers, most common recovery strategies of third party logistics service providers and the effects of these recovery strategies on B2B relationships between third party logistics service providers and their customers
Our research question focuses on the identification of 3PL service failures and our research objectives are to: (1) explore and analyze the most common service failures, (2) implemented recovery strategies in third party logistics service industry in Turkey and (3) investigate their impact on the related business relationships
Summary
The service market is steadily growing in industrialized countries and even though the products of service market actors are intangible and non-physical, they engage in physical distribution activities and make decisions (Ballou, 2004: 21). Considering the competitiveness levels and the aforementioned inability to standardize employee actions, sustaining high service quality is of paramount importance in service industries in general and in the third party logistics service industry in particular. Transportation and additional logistics services provided by 3PLs make up the economy of a country whilst transforming raw materials into finished goods using an effective international physical distribution system and a solid supply chain (Rojas, 2018). Our research question focuses on the identification of 3PL service failures and our research objectives are to: (1) explore and analyze the most common service failures, (2) implemented recovery strategies in third party logistics service industry in Turkey and (3) investigate their impact on the related business relationships. The paper explains the research methodology used, manner of data collection, reliability, data analysis and results, offers a conclusion, gives recommendations and ends with limitations and further research sections
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