The Evaluation of Location Competitiveness for International Logistics Center: Case of Northeast Asia

The expansion on the scale of international trade and rapid economic growth in Northeast Asia have caused intense competition among global companies for securing international logistics center in Northeast Asia. Analyzing location competitiveness for international logistics center in Northeast Asia, this paper aims to extract implications for enhancing locational competitiveness. Employing the relative importance among location selection factors extracted from AHP analysis in prior study, we evaluated the major five port-cities in Northeast Asia including Busan, Gwangyang, Shanghai, Qingdao and Tokyo. In the evaluations, Shanghai (3.926) ranked as the first, followed by Busan (3.859), Qingdao (3.555), Tokyo (3.013) and Gwangyang (2.915). Furthermore, the causal relationships between determinants for location choice decision (logistics factor, cost factor, market factor, service factor and environmental factor) and dependent variables (competitiveness of international logistics center, potentiality to growth, present intention to move into and future plan to move into) were analyzed to provide implications. Results provide useful insights for further improvements, and helps strategic agenda for future development of port-cities.