Benefit segmentation of the container shipping market in Turkey

Abstract

Marketing policies have gained more importance in container shipping as the industry experiences challenges arising from commoditization. Market segmentation is fundamental to marketing policies, yet it needs a detailed analysis in container shipping. Accordingly, this paper aims to explore homogenous customer groups in container shipping by conducting a segmentation analysis, which can help container lines apply more efficient marketing policies. A survey study is conducted on 356 shippers in Turkey. The study develops five reliable and valid selection criteria factors and applies cluster analysis based on the selection criteria factors. The cluster analysis produces a total of six benefit segments which are differentiable. The segments are significantly identified by the demographic characteristics of shippers. The paper suggests several implications for the marketing policies of container lines.

User value identification based on an improved consumer value segmentation algorithm

“…, 2017; Mu et al. , 2017; Balci and Cetin, 2020; Cristina and Jean-Pierre, 2020; Huang et al. , 2020), this study successively discusses the segmentation results of each algorithm when the number of sub-markets is 2–6.…”

“…parameters. In terms of the number of clusters N, since most fields subdivide a large market into 2-6 sub-markets in practice (Bruwer et al, 2017;Mu et al, 2017;Balci and Cetin, 2020;Cristina and Jean-Pierre, 2020;Huang et al, 2020), this study successively discusses the segmentation results of each algorithm when the number of sub-markets is 2-6. In this work, the SC and CH obtained are labeled as W_SC and W_CH when considering the consumer value, and vice versa as UW_SC and UW_CH.…”