A theoretical framework of brand image and service quality on third-party logistics service

Since its origins in the 1980s, third-party logistics is maturing as an option to help increase supply chain effectiveness ^[1]. The trend of using third-party logistics services becomes prominent especially in the industrializing countries like China ^[2] where manufacturing constitutes a major part of the GDP ^[3]. This development poses a great challenge to channel managers in selecting the third-party logistics service provider (3PL) and evaluating the quality of its services. Unfortunately, the research nowadays does not provide a sufficient insight on these aspects. Many third-party logistics studies are descriptive ^{[4, 5 and 6]} in nature, which address the issues such as the benefits of using third-party logistics services and the areas to be outsourced. To resolve this challenge in channel management, it needs to go a step forward in examining the causality between satisfaction and loyalty on third-party logistics services. Drawing the concepts from marketing, a research model is proposed to integrate brand image and service quality in predicting satisfaction and loyalty. It also considers the effect of manufacturer-3PL relationship on these causations. © 2008 IEEE.