Key Success Factors, Performance Metrics, and Globalization Issues in the Third-Party Logistics (3PL) Industry: A Survey of North American Service Providers

This paper reports on a survey of North American third-party logistics (3PL) service providers. Although current research on 3PL provides valuable insights into the 3PL industry, it is primarily descriptive in nature and does not explore the underlying relationships among several factors and key issues related to the industry. This paper presents an exploratory study of the North American 3PL industry in terms of the key success factors, performance metrics, and globalization issues. Respondents to the survey are categorized based on their ratings of key success factors, and the differences in perceptions among categories are highlighted. Also, the factors with respect to which respondents are significantly underperforming are identified. Importance of the key success factors for various performance metrics is established through dependency relationships, which provide a guideline to managers for allocation of scarce resources. Factors responsible for growing globalization, important issues in connection with setting up 3PL operations in a foreign country, and growth strategies adopted by 3PL firms are also analyzed from the point of view of the respondents. Finally, the contribution to logistics research, implications of the survey findings for logistics managers, and directions for future research on 3PL are presented in the concluding section.