Shipping marketing & customer orientation: The psychology & buying behavior of charterer & shipper in the tramp & liner market

Marketing of shipping companies is not only concerned with the development and implementation of successful strategies. For marketing to be successful there needs to be a marketing orientation throughout the company which fosters the marketing concept and demonstrates a marketing approach to all internal and external activities. The concept of customer orientation in business markets has attracted attention from both academics and managers and it has been widely used in the marketing discipline. The term customer oriented firms is used to describe how knowledgeable the firm is about the clients’ needs and how responsive the firm is to them in terms of the continuous value creation and delivery. Despite the increasing literature being focused on customer orientation and business relationships in general, there is a lack of literature explaining the marketing orientation in shipping companies. Shipping marketing can be described by means of all practical aspects within a marketing program, such as market analysis, segmentation, planning, differentiation, positioning, promotion and transport service production. A marketing orientation is based around a philosophy, which places the charterer and shipper first, and it recognizes that every action taken by the shipping company ultimately affects the customer relationship. Therefore, a necessary precondition of an effective shipping marketing is the understanding of the different needs the charterers and shippers have within the different market segments. The weakness of understanding the needs the client groups have, leads to the weakness of correct marketing planning and to the failure of providing the desired transport services. The article begins with a brief discussion and definitions for the marketing of shipping companies. Then, the framework of customer orientation in shipping companies is analyzed. The paper is based on an empirical research, which concerns the buying behavior in the tramp and liner market. Consequently, the psychology and buying behavior of a shipping company’s clients are examined, as well as the charterers’ and shippers’ transportation needs, decision processes and the factors influencing them. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings in terms of the implications for both theory and shipping practice