Digitalization in Container Shipping Services: Critical Resources for Competitive Advantage

Abstract

The container shipping market has been transforming into a digital era, in which many operations and marketing facilities are being digitalized. Digitalization offers several benefits to container lines, such as performance improvement, efficiency, and better integration with suppliers and customers' effectiveness. The importance of digitalization is particularly appreciated during the Coronavirus disease-2019 disruption. However, a successful digitalization process requires several resources and capabilities that carriers and forwarders should exploit. It is still not clear what these resources are and which of them is more important. Accordingly, this study aims to identify and rank the critical resources necessary for a successful digital transformation of services to achieve a competitive advantage. Identification of the resources was done using the underpinning theory of resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and conducting interviews. This study then implements an analytical hierarchical process method to rank the relevant digitalization resources. The results indicate that the organizational and collaboration resources are the most important main resources, while the organizational culture for learning and innovativeness, integration of digital services, and collaboration with suppliers are the most important sub-resources. This study aims to contribute to the digitalization literature in the shipping industry by identifying and ranking critical resources within the perspective of RBV of the firm.