Evaluation of service level of major Turkish container ports

Due to the severe changes in the intemational port industry, the ports around the world are in a severe competition to become the "hub" port of their region. For this purpose, they are not only heavily investing in their infrastructure, but also implementing modem management techniques to survive in this fierce competition. Hence, this paper tried to evaluate the service level of major Turkish ports. A questionnaire survey was conducted targeting field experts which are the decision makers of shipping companies in Turkey. Seven factors for service quality of ports were derived ftom literature. The relative weights ofthese factors were determined by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and construct validity of each factor was checked by confirmatory factor analysis. On the basis of the results, several suggestions were derived for Turkish port industry.