CHAPTER 1 Introduction

Research Background/ Scope

During the last decades of service quality research, Parasuraman et al (1985) has reported that excellence service is a profitable strategy because it results in more new customers, fewer lost customers and more insulation from a rise in competition requiring the performance of services. This statement holds true meaning for the port industry, which is growing with phenomenal rate. Specially, in the last three decades, ports played a significant role in the growth of global economy. The continuous increase in international & national trade has made ports to compete, for any business. Today ports handle 90 percent of the world's trade in volume (Song and Yeo, 2004). Figure 1 shows actual and expected containerisation world trade in 30 years duration.

Figure -1 The containerised world trade volume 1995-2007 Source: retrieved from www.globalinsight.com

Port Jeff Brewing Company

Aberdeen Port Control tower

Figure 1

The researchers indicate that it would be higher than expected. Due to globalisation, it becomes necessary to rank the port in a worldwide context based on their size, and services being offered. There are several ways to measure performance of port and its efficiency. Measurement could be based on performance indicators or utilise a range of techniques for assessment and analysis. Although many analytical tools and instruments exist, a problem arises when one tries to apply them to a range of ports and terminals (Bichou & Gray, 2004). To measure the performance of port is a large and complex task due to variability in their operations, scope and nature. Making choices for an appropriate measurement tool would be difficult. A port can be viewed as a complex system Prof. (Hassan, 1993).The main measurements of the physical entities include, port size, berths, channels warehouses,