An investigation of the opportunistic relationships among shipping companies and ship-brokers

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to present a conceptual framework which explores the application of relationship marketing in the maritime sector and especially the factors affecting shipping companies and ship-brokers’ partnerships. In particular, this survey illustrates the relations among opportunism, affective and calculative commitment and trust. A special survey instrument was developed and tested with Exploratory Factor and Regression Analyses. Data from 109 ship-brokers were collected through personal interviews. The results finally indicated that the three constructs named affective commitment; calculative commitment and trust are statistically significant for opportunism. Based on the fact that there are few publication literature exploring the principles of relationship marketing in the maritime sector, this pape aims to find out how the above mentioned constructs are linked. On the other hand, practitioners are interested in getting informed about the collaborations between shipping companies - shipbrokers in order to lead to more focused and structured partnerships.

JEL Classification: M1, M3, L9