Non-price competition in the port sector: A case study of ports in Turkey

Although the port sector has been facing increasing competition, there has been limited research focusing on how ports compete, especially using non-price competition strategies. There are few studies on non-price competition in the port sector but they mainly focus on the marketing aspect, while other studies on non-price competition do not concern the port sector, which deserves more attention because of its service nature and market structure among many other characteristics.

The current paper seeks to fill this gap in the literature, especially from a combined marketing-economic perspective. Especially the paper’s main objective is to identify the determinants of non-price competition in the port sector and evaluate their effect on various aspects of non-price competition. We start with a conceptual framework on general competition to explain how competition in the sector can be affected by various factors and further propose an analytical framework on non-price competition, which are driven by a number of factors external and internal to ports. The conceptual model is used to support the design of the questionnaire and test the hypotheses using the factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) methods and data collected from a survey of Turkish ports. Based on the analysis results, the implications for port management and future research are discussed.