An empirical study on assessing brand equity for global shipping carrier-based logistics service providers

The main purpose of this paper is to apply a fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) model to assess brand equity (BE) for the global shipping carrier-based logistics service providers (GSLPs) from shippersʹ perspective in Taiwan shipping market. Firstly, some concepts and methods of the fuzzy set theory are applied to develop a fuzzy MCDM algorithm. For matching this assessing process, a hierarchical structure with five criteria, seventeen sub-criteria and three alternatives is constructed. Subsequently, the linguistic values are employed to appraise the fuzzy weights and fuzzy ratings. Furthermore, by combining the ideal and anti-ideal concepts, the highest BE company can be assessed. Finally, an empirical survey about three GSLPs in Taiwan shipping market is performed to appraise the systematic approach. The results of this study show that: (1) customer value is the most important criteria for BE from the shippersʹ perspective in Taiwan; (2) the top three key sub-criteria are high quality, multiplicity services and low cost, respectively; (3) the GSLP company A2, the headquarter is located at Northwest Europe, is assessed as the highest BE company based on the results of the proposed fuzzy MCDM algorithm.