Purpose - The parcel delivery service(courier) industry all over the world has been expanding its market so far, but its growth has been declining in recent years. In this situation, most parcel delivery companies are having trouble with managing themselves because of the pressure from the customer to increase service level and decrease the rate. The purpose of this study is to provide ways to improve competitive advantages of the parcel delivery service industry by evaluating the multi-period operating efficiency of Korea, Japan and global service providers. Research design, data, and methodology - The data for the period of 2011 to 2014 were collected from the annual reports published by parcel delivery companies. In this study, we analyze the marketability (revenue), profitability (operating profits), and management conditions (net profits) of parcel service companies by combining information on human resources (number of employees) and material resources (total assets and equity). Therefore, the number of employees, total assets, and equity are selected as input variables, and revenue, operating profits, and net profits as the output variables. In this study, DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) is used to measure the comparative efficiency and MPI (Malmquist Productivity Index) is used to analyze the trend of change of the efficiency for a multi-year period. Results - The operational efficiency scores of medium-sized parcel delivery companies in Korea are higher than other larger competitors such as Korean, Japan and Global larger companies. As of 2014, Logen(1.878) was found to be the most efficient parcel delivery enterprise, followed by KGB (1.224), and Kyoungdong(1.002). Otherwise, Hanjin(0.235), CJ(0.262), Hyundai Logistics(0.657), DHL(0.611), UPS(0.766), FedEx(0.498), TNT(0.350), Yamato(0.762) and Sagawa(0.520), larger sized companies, were done inefficiently. The productivity of parcel delivery companies is influenced by endogenous factors as well as exogenous ones such as changes in business environment and technological advances. Conclusions - Korean medium-sized companies have relatively high efficiency scores in operation. That is why they still survive the competitive market in Korea where market restructuring on the industry has been expected to be conducted for many years. The reason why medium-sized couriers had higher efficient scores than larger couriers is that most of couriers spend more operating expenses versus unit price of delivery which is the amount of money that is needed in order to send a package by parcel service. So the delivery unit price must be taken into account by all the expenses associated with the cost of fuel, labor and maintenance expenses for facilities, etc. therefore, the unit price must be increased to strengthen business competitive power. In order for the industry to have more competitive advantage, the companies need to make profits by increasing demand volume and raising the delivery rate to provide high-quality delivery service to customers. And both endogenous and exogenous change must take precedence in order to strengthen their competitiveness.
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