Methods of classification and evaluation of LSP services - in a turbulent environment

Abstract

The article represents subsequent part of the cyclical publications of the Laboratory of Economics and Accessibility of Transport (former Department of Economic Research).There is a large variety of services offered by companies operating in the LSP sector (transport, forwarding and logistics) in Poland. These companies differ in size, organizational structure, ownership, and business model. There are many companies that provide only one type of logistics services, e.g. transport, warehousing, contract logistics, and many entities that offer a wide range of logistics services. In Poland, the LSP sector is currently undergoing profound transformations, which are the result of post-pandemic changes, restrictions of the current war in Ukraine and the implementation of the so-called Mobility Package, which affect not only the condition of individual companies, but also dismantling or transforming the existing supply chains. However, there is still no uniform method of classifying and evaluating LSP services that would be widely applicable and would ensure comparability of results according to specific criteria. The aim of the article is to review the existing classifications and methods of evaluating LSP services and to propose our own taxonomy considering the changes and trends observed in the Polish LSP sector. The article presents definition of logistics services, their components and evaluation criteria. The analytical part discusses the structure of companies providing these services on the Polish LSP market. Empirical results for the strategic segmentation of the LSP sector are presented. The authors presented methodological problems of analysing and presenting the results of LSP units. They also proposed their own balanced method of ranking LSP companies. To this end, they reviewed the available ranking methods. Considering the identified limitations and the results of the study of correlations between indicators used to create publicly available LSP rankings, a new method was proposed, indicating the way of selecting evaluation measures. Economic measures belonging to various groups of analysis used in the economic analysis and assessment of the investment potential of LSP companies were considered. In the proposed method of ranking LSP companies, the authors also considered the fleet emissivity measure, which is of particular importance among the still dominant transport sector on the Polish LSP market.