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The purpose of this paper is to assist ocean container carriers in their service quality improvement strategies to ensure breakthrough performance in India.

A total of seven container carriers have been involved in this study. To explore the list of service criteria, reviews of transportation literature, customer satisfaction survey questionnaires of container carriers, SERVQUAL battery, telephonic interviews and focus groups were conducted. For data collection, a shipper satisfaction questionnaire was administered. After data collection, a mean score analysis using SPSS 15 was taken up to assess the present service performance levels of the select container carriers. Then a performance gap analysis was carried out using the gap analysis formula found in the benchmarking literature.

Out of the 48 service criteria which decide the service quality of ocean container carriers, Maersk is the top performer in respect of 23 criteria, both Hanjin and MSC are top in eight criteria each, Evergreen is top in five criteria, APL is top in four criteria and CMA CGM is top in two criteria. Hapag has not scored top in any of the criteria. The gap analysis shows that APL needs to improve 44 areas in which it has shown negative gaps, CMA CGM needs to improve 47 criteria, Evergreen 45 criteria, Hanjin 47 criteria, Hapag 48 criteria, Maersk 40 criteria and MSC 43 criteria to become excellent.

This paper has enabled container carriers to understand the list of criteria that decide their service quality in the Indian container carrier industry. It has also informed them of their present service performance levels, and their areas of strengths and weakness. This will help them in efficient resource allocation. Understanding the areas and sizes of negative gaps, they can take appropriate steps to close them and become excellent.

This is the first service quality improvement study undertaken in the Indian container carrier industry and it has opened up enormous scope for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework based on analytic hierarchy process to ocean container carriers operating in India, with a view to assist them in benchmarking their service quality.

To explore various service attributes, review of carrier selection literature, customer satisfaction survey questionnaires, SERVQUAL, telephonic interviews and focus groups were used and to cluster the attributes into various criteria, another focus group was conducted. This focus group also carried out pairwise comparisons of criteria by using a questionnaire. This paper has used the expert choice 11.5 software for benchmarking.

Indian shippers use 48 attributes in the carrier evaluation process and they cluster these attributes under seven meaningful criteria, namely rate, customer service, operations, reputation, infrastructure, scheduling and information technology orientation and communication. Out of these, rate is considered as the most important criterion. Then it is explained how the focal firm shall identify the benchmark by using the framework in a step‐by‐step manner.

By using the framework, the container carriers operating in India shall carry out benchmarking of their service quality in order to win over competition and ensure breakthrough performance.

The paper presents premier research in the area of Indian container carrier industry and is expected to widen the knowledge base of the transportation literature. The framework is complete in all respects, incorporating sensitivity and gap analyses and it shall be generalized to any service firm for its competitive service quality benchmarking needs.