A Strategic Diagnostic Tool Applied to Iberian Seaports: An Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract

The highly competitive and rapidly changing environment faced by businesses has greatly increased the need for strategic planning. The importance of formulating strategies to reach competitive advantages with implications in the performance is becoming increasingly evident in the seaport context. Thus, it is relevant and appropriate to apply strategic positioning tools to seaports given the role of competitive strategies in the growth and development of this industry. This research aims to analyse the strategic positioning of the leading Iberian Peninsula seaports (Portuguese and Spanish seaports) using the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix as a strategic tool in an evolutionary perspective. The portfolio analysis developed subsequently focuses on the annual data of eight seaports in a selected period of 18 years (1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)) and on five categories of traffic: liquid bulk (LB), dry bulk (DB), containers (CO), ro-ro (roll-on/roll-off) and conventional cargo (CC). This research allows us to compare and analyse different levels of performance and identify which of the seaports have improved their strategic positioning during the considered period. The findings reveal a better positioning of Spanish seaports in relation to total traffic and that most of the seaports in the BCG matrix had changed from the first to the third period. The seaport of Valencia is the only one that has maintained its Star Performer position in all the 18 years analysed. Furthermore, considering container traffic, the results evidence the seaports of Algeciras, Valencia and Barcelona as having attained a remarkable position of leadership.

Application of classification rules to Italian ports

“…In the following, the focus is on the results of the comparison among: UST, BRR, RAR (which is the newest and it has been considered the best because it is based on a range of ports [9]), NRVA, NRGDP.…”

“…The main purpose of this paper is to highlight the sensitivity of the ranking of Italian ports to different weighting rules that can be found in the literature and to the proposed new weighting rules. It must be noticed that the weighting rules are also fundamental in Product Portfolio Analysis, applied to ports, which describes the performance of a port in terms of market share and growth rate [8,9]: this type of analysis is used as a tool for strategic port planning.…”