ABSTRACT
In today’s world, companies are operating in a global environment with constantly changing competitive conditions. The era of highly individualized production of products and services has replaced mass production as well as mass customization. The use of modern technology in combination with rather cheap transport possibilities leads to the exploitation of time advantages over the whole globe (see e.g. Song and Lee 2009, Song and Panayides 2015). Consequently, maritime transport is seen as the most important transport mode and the backbone for the facilitation of global trade (see Cheng et al., 2015).
