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This paper examines the possible cooperation options in terms of empty container repositioning across alliances for shipping lines based in the Greater China Region (China, Taiwan and Hong Kong SAR), after the three global shipping alliances reformed in April 2017.

This paper offers a comprehensive review to the latest shipping alliances and introduces a new cooperative dimension among shipping lines based in the Greater China Region which are member of different shipping alliances.

Cooperation among shipping lines in the Greater China Region in terms of empty container handling is possible in terms of resource sharing among shipping lines across alliances that fosters mega shipping line formation in the future.

Shipping lines should review their current empty container repositioning strategies and explore cooperation among non-alliance members having headquarters in proximity for quick responsiveness in empty container repositioning plan and execution.

This is a research directly analyzing the empty repositioning plan of the major shipping lines and their major service routes, fleet and containers.

This chapter explains the impact containerisation has on the various partners of the global supply chain and the challenges companies encounter and the solutions they use in dealing with empty container repositioning.

The phenomenon of imbalanced container flows and its impact on shipping lines, shippers, container haulage companies, port development and the economy are presented. Special attention is given to explain the many solutions companies use to reduce the impact of empty container repositioning, hence tracing out the past research that led to these solutions and pointing to potentially new research directions in the future.

Because of the widespread use of containerisation and the imbalanced container flows that results from globalisation, empty container repositioning will be an ongoing issue for the maritime logistics industry. Many solutions are being used, but there is room for improvement and more research is needed.

Empty container repositioning is an important issue but has not been deemed as such in the literature. This chapter explains the reasons it is important and that its impact is not limited to shipping lines only but affects the whole supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of marketing communications of British shipping lines in the period from c.1840 to c.1970 to establish the extent to which these outputs reflect extant scholarship which points to the lack of innovation as a key reason for the demise of these lines.

The research is built on a survey of >450 posters plotting the shifting nature of advertising messages over this long period in response to the market. This is supported by reading trade press contemporary to the period to establish broader trends in marketing and whether this product sector was aberrant.

What is revealed is a generally static response in the promotion of British shipping lines throughout the timeframe, at odds with trends elsewhere. What stands out is the widespread criticism of the time singling out the shipping poster. This suggests an advanced appreciation of the role of the poster and the effectiveness of promotional messages focussing on emotions- versus a product-centred approach.

Whilst there is an established literature which suggests that the British merchant marine was hamstrung by a pattern of family ownership making adaptation slow, no research to date has expressly read marketing as a window onto that culture. This paper shows that whilst there may have been change within the sector which these British shipping lines responded to, when it came to presenting themselves in public via their communications strategy, they adopted a staid, conservative approach. British shipping lines, throughout the period, had a very fixed idea about who they were and what best represented their business irrespective of dramatic shifts in attitudes concerning how best to reach consumers. Interrogating promotional material, and particularly the ubiquitous shipping poster, provides another insight into the conservative and debilitating corporate culture of British shipping.

The liner shipping industry underwent a major round of change between 2014 and 2017 where the concentration ratio of the top ten carriers rose from 64 per cent in 2013 to 82 per cent by 2017. This paper aims to analyze the impact of these developments on the state of shipping connectivity for major container transshipment hubs in Southeast Asia, namely, Port Klang, Singapore and Tanjung Pelepas.

The developments in shipping services deployed before and after the latest round of reshuffling in the liner shipping industry were analyzed.

Significant service rationalization took place in the period that saw 38 per cent reduction in the number of shipping services called at the ports. Participation in alliance arrangement was revealed to be important for shipping lines to compete successfully on the Asia–Europe trade route in the new shipping landscape. Terminal operators should expect further rationalization of services should overcapacity persist. Maintaining hub status would require the ability to accommodate the strategic, operational and commercial requirements of the entire alliance rather than just focusing on the key shipping line.

This is the first paper to examine the effects of the latest round of consolidation in the liner shipping industry. In-depth analyses were conducted for shipping services where the service configuration was examined. The case of Southeast Asia and the Asia–Europe trade route was used to illustrate the impact with managerial and policy implications for shipping lines, terminal operators and port authorities.

Severe disruptions to maritime supply chains, including port closures, congestion and shortages in shipping capacity, have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper’s purpose is to explore flexibility-based countermeasures that enable actors in maritime supply chains to mitigate the effects of disruptions with different characteristics.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with shipping lines, shippers, forwarders and ports. Data on the COVID-19 pandemic's effects and countermeasures were collected and compared with data regarding the 2016–2017 Gothenburg port conflict.

Spatial, capacity, service and temporal flexibility emerged as the primary countermeasures, whilst important characteristics of disruptions were geographical spread, duration, uncertainty, criticality, the element of surprise and intensity. Spatial flexibility was exercised in both disruptions by switching to alternative ports. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring capacity flexibility included first removing and then adding vessels. Shipping lines exercising service flexibility prioritised certain cargo, which made the spot market uncertain and reduced flexibility for forwarders, importers and exporters that changed carriers or traffic modes. Experience with disruptions meant less surprise and better preparation for spatial flexibility.

Understanding how actors in maritime supply chains exercise flexibility-based countermeasures amid disruptions with different characteristics can support preparedness for coming disruptions.

Comparing flexibility-based measures in a pandemic versus port conflict provides insights into the important characteristics of disruptions and the relevance of mitigation strategies. The resilience of maritime supply chains, although underexamined compared with manufacturing supply chains, is essential for maintaining global supply chain flows.

Early twentieth century transatlantic migration was both a massive transoceanic population transfer and a complex travel business. The successful growth of this multinational commerce was based not on fare reductions, but on risk management strategies. Shipping lines provided costly carrying capacity sufficient to accommodate severely fluctuating demand for transatlantic migration, and did so in a manner which improved the reliability and quality of travel for migrants.

We present a continuous time series on first cabin passenger fares for ocean travel from New York to the British Isles covering nearly a century of time. We discuss the conceptual and empirical difficulties of constructing such a time series, and examine the reasons for differences between the behavior of advertised fares and those based on passenger revenues. We find that while there are conceptual differences between these two measurements, as well as differences in the average values, the two generally moved in parallel, which means that the advertised fare series can serve as a reasonable proxy for movement of the revenue-based fares. We also find that advertised fares declined over time, roughly paralleling the drop in freight rates for US bulk exports, until around 1890, but thereafter increased while freight rates continued to decline. We propose several hypotheses for this divergent behavior and suggest lines of future research.

This research proposes a framework to conceptualise the potential realm of data regarding shipping connectivity for application of data analytics which can be used to generate deeper insights with respect to the state of such linkages and potential areas for practical application.

The study method involved comprehensive presentation of different perspectives of assessing shipping connectivity and levels of data contained within container shipping services and proposed potential application to analyse profitability, performance, competitiveness, risk and environmental impact.

Advances in capabilities to handle large volumes of data offer scope for an integrated approach which utilises all available data from various stakeholders in analyses of liner shipping connectivity. Research shows how different types of data contained in container shipping services are related and can be organised for application of data analytics.

Research implications are offered to shipping lines, port managers and operators and policymakers.

This research presented a conceptual framework that captures the range of data involved in container shipping services and how data analytics can be practically applied in an integrated manner.

This paper is the first in literature to discuss in detail the different levels of data that reside within shipping services that constitute liner shipping connectivity for application of data analytics.

This paper aims to conduct a review on cruise shipping and the cruise shipping industry. The current trends are analyzed for the industry, showing that this industry is still young and has great potential to boom. Meanwhile, the Asia market is the fastest growth region among the global, to which increasing cruise ships are repositioned by major cruise lines. However, for such a promising industry, the literature review on some state-of-the-art research works suggests that the research works that have been conducted for the cruise shipping are quite limited, and the majority of the works belongs to empirical and descriptive studies, which does not provide optimization-based quantitative analysis on some operation planning problems.

This paper conducts a review on cruise shipping and the cruise shipping industry.

In reality, there are some important operation planning problems faced by cruise lines or cruise ships, and four of them are addressed in this paper in response to the fast growing trend. The addressed operation planning problems are cruise fleet management, cruise ship deployment, cruise itinerary design and cruise service planning.

The importance and the attention for the research on the problems are also elaborated in the paper.

A growing recognition of the critical differences between industrial and consumer services requires additional research emphasis on marketing of services in business‐to‐business context. Presents an application of SERVQUAL as a measure of service quality in Ocean Freight Services. Based on a cross‐section sample of 114 business organizations in Singapore, which regularly utilize ocean freight services for their export needs, the study asked shipping lines for their heaviest used export routes and provide their overall evaluation of services provided by their preferred suppliers. Respondents also evaluated various interfacing departments in the shipping line and SERVQUAL measures on various service quality dimensions. This study identifies the various strengths and weaknesses of the interfacing departments as well as in‐service quality determinants. Further, the relationships between overall line performance, service quality, as well as specific customer service interfacing departments are examined. The findings have important implications for shipping lines’ marketing strategies. Though conducted in Singapore, the study is equally applicable to other Asian environments and NICs where many of the same lines are offering freight services to the exporting organizations.