Logistics service providers in Turkey: a panel data analysis

Abstract

The companies competing in today's business environment are forced to re-engineer their supply chain management in order to meet the increasing needs of the customers. Today’s trend for industrial firms is to have a variable cost system by receiving logistics services through outsourcing and focusing on core competencies. This study aims to analyze the logistics service providers sector in Turkey comprehensively and to reveal the sector profile clearly by comparing the data collected in year 2001 and 2007. For this purpose, initially, an empirical research study was carried out to assess the profile of companies operating as logistics service providers and the logistics services already being purchased by real sector and the nature of sector-specific services. The companies to participate in the research were selected so as to form a homogeneous distribution with respect to their turnover, number of employees and geographical locations, therefore aiming to achieve a complete portrait of the Turkish Logistics Providers Sector as a result of the research. The field study involves face-to-face interviews with 71 companies for the year 2001, and 101 companies for the year 2007. The results indicate that although the number of 3rd party logistics providers (3PLs) increase in total, when the number of different sectors they are providing services is analyzed, it is found that especially for the top served sectors, the number of logistics service providers is significantly decreased. This can be interpreted as the 3PL companies are focusing on a limited number of different sectors to provide services.