ENHANCEMENT OF COMPETITIVENESS OF TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS COMPANIES IN REGIONAL MARKETS

Abstract

Intensifying competition between enterprises is a typical attribute of developing market relations, and competition, in turn, becomes a powerhouse of development for companies. Competitiveness is a key category of the modern economy and a condition of efficient national integration into global economic processes and active engagement in globalisation. Amid globalisation, the competitive market of logistics services is subject to a wide number of diverse factors influencing the degree and structure of competition in the transport and logistics industry. The development of logistics as a service demonstrates that it has come to be one of the key strategic competitive instruments that shapes lingering competitive advantages in managing both international and domestic supply chains. Those companies that have adopted the concept of integrated logistics have successfully built up their competitive positions in the market. Today, even regional markets pose new levels of requirements in terms of quality standards of transport and forwarding services, cargo safety and enterprise reliability of the regional transport complex. The paper describes a mechanism to ensure competitiveness approaching it as a system of measures to exploit competitive advantages to reach consumers, with profit maximisation as the objective function. The authors have developed a methodological toolkit to elaborate a competitiveness programme specifying methodological proposals by the stages of programme development. The conditions and specifics of the development of transport and logistics outsourcing by consumers in a regional market are identified by the PL provider levels. An assessment of the regional competitive environment is conducted according to consumer-relevant quality indicators of logistics services. An algorithm is approbated for developing a competitiveness enhancement programme in a case study of a logistics enterprise.