Make or buy decisions in and levels of logistics outsourcing: an empirical analysis in the food manufacturing industry

The objective of this paper is to study the determinants of outsourcing of different levels of logistics activities in the food manufacturing industry. In our research, four different levels of logistics activities were examined: (1st level) transportation, (2nd level) packaging, (3rd level) transportation and inventory management, and (4th level) distribution network design. Questionnaires were mailed to logistics managers in the Netherlands and Taiwan of which an effective sample size of 114 were used in this study. Our results reveal that three theoretical perspectives (transaction cost theory, resource-based view, supply chain management) contribute to the explanation of an outsourcing decision, i.e. the determinant factors for logistics outsourcing in the food industry are: asset specificity, core closeness and supply chain complexity. Furthermore, the results show that each level of logistics activity has its own key outsourcing determinant