A critical review of port performance and port choice: a port logistics system perspective

Port performance, port choice, and port logistics system are highly interrelated but are traditionally evaluated in a separate manner in the port management literature, lacking an integrated and comprehensive evaluation framework. To overcome this limitation, this research examines port management from the perspective of integrating port performance and port choice into a port logistics system. By conducting a critical review of port performance, port choice and port logistics system, a conceptual framework is developed to indicate how they are interrelated through the means of a common set of determinants. Later, the total logistics cost function at ports is developed to integrate different services at ports, which addresses the critical port performance indicators and port choice determinants in a more systematic way and offers a comprehensive performance measurement tool. The proposed function creates implications not only for port users to evaluate and choose ports, but also for port managers to perform a trade-off between different areas of port logistics performance enhancement for achieving the minimum total logistics cost and higher customer satisfaction