St. Petersburg University
Graduate School of Management
Master in Management Program
Factors affecting the efficiency of air cargo transportation
in Russia.
Master’s Thesis by the 2nd year student
Concentration — International Logistics &
Supply Chain Management
Arkadiy Yurkanskiy
Research advisor:
Associate Professor, Dr. Axel T. Schulte
St. Petersburg
2016
ЗАЯВЛЕНИЕ О САМОСТОЯТЕЛЬНОМ ХАРАКТЕРЕ ВЫПОЛНЕНИЯ
ВЫПУСКНОЙ КВАЛИФИКАЦИОННОЙ РАБОТЫ
Я, Юрканский Аркадий, с туд е н т второго курса магистратуры направления
«Менеджмент», заявляю, что в моей магистерской диссертации на тему « Факторы,
влияющие на эффективность воздушных грузоперевозок в России», представленной в
службу обе спечения программ магистратуры для по следующей передачи в
государственную аттестационную комиссию для публичной защиты, не содержится
элементов плагиата.
Все прямые заимствования из печатных и электронных источников, а также из
защищенных ранее выпускных квалификационных работ, кандидатских и докторских
диссертаций имеют соответствующие ссылки.
Мне известно содержание п. 9.7.1 Правил обучения по основным образовательным
программам высшего и среднего профессионального образования в СПбГУ о том, что
«ВКР выполняется индивидуально каждым студентом под руководством назначенного ему
научного руководителя», и п. 51 Устава федерального государственного бюджетного
образовательного учреждения высшего образования «Санкт-Петербургский
государственный университет» о том, что «студент подлежит отчислению из СанктПетербургского университета за представление курсовой или выпускной
квалификационной работы, выполненной другим лицом (лицами)».
(Подпись студента)
26.05.16
(Дата)
STATEMENT ABOUT THE INDEPENDENT CHARACTER OF
THE MASTER THESIS
I, Arkadiy Yurkanskiy, second year master student, program «Management», state that
my master thesis on the topic « Factors affecting the efficiency of air cargo transportation in
Russia », which is presented to the Master Office to be submitted to the Official Defense
Committee for the public defense, does not contain any elements of plagiarism.
All direct borrowings from printed and electronic sources, as well as from master theses,
PhD and doctorate theses which were defended earlier, have appropriate references.
I am aware that according to paragraph 9.7.1. of Guidelines for instruction in major
curriculum programs of higher and secondary professional education at St. Petersburg University
«A master thesis must be completed by each of the degree candidates individually under the
supervision of his or her advisor», and according to paragraph 51 of Charter of the Federal State
Institution of Higher Education Saint-Petersburg State University «a student can be expelled
from St. Petersburg University for submitting of the course or graduation qualification work
developed by other person (persons)».
(Student’s signature)
26.05.16
(Date)
2
Abstract
Master Student's Name
Master Thesis Title
Faculty
Main field of study
Year
Academic Advisor's
Name
Description of the goal,
tasks and main results
Arkadiy Yurkanskiy
Factors affecting the efficiency of air cargo transportation in
Russia.
Graduate School of Management
International Logistics & Supply Chain Management
2016
Dr. Axel T. Schulte
This master thesis presents the analysis of air cargo
transportation market in Russia, reviews the literature on air
cargo operations and compares theoretical studies with the
practical problems of cargo carriers and forwarders. The goal of
the study is to identify factors affecting the efficiency of air
cargo transportation in Russia, challenges and trends of the
Russian market. Data obtained using a questionnaire survey and
two-structured interviews revealed that cargo operations are
closely connected to passenger transportation in Russia, cargo
forwarders consider overall economic conditions and increased
terminal handling fees as their major challenges and do not see
any ways for improvement. Cost-cutting strategy and therefore
keeping a position in the market are the main trends of
operators in the market. This master thesis could be used as a
basis for cross-regional studies of emerging markets related to
air cargo transportation in order to identify similarities and
Keywords
patterns of freight shipment structure of emerging markets.
air cargo transportation; efficiency factors; challenges and
trends.
3
Аннотация
Автор
Название магистерской
диссертации
Факультет
Направление подготовки
Год
Научный руководитель
Описание цели, задач и
основных результатов
Аркадий Юрканский
Факторы, влияющие на эффективность воздушных
грузоперевозок в России.
Высшая Школа Менеджмента
Международная логистика и управление цепями
поставок
2016
Аксель Шульте
В данной магистерской диссертации представлен анализ
воздушных грузоперевозок в России, обзор научной
литературы и исследований на тему воздушных
грузоперевозок и сравнение теоретических концепций с
практическими проблемами грузоперевозчиков. Цель
работы заключается в выявлении факторов, влияющих
на эффективность воздушных грузоперевозок в России,
проблем и трендов на рынке. Данные были получены
при помощи анкетного опроса и двух
с т ру к т у р и р о в а н н ы х и н т е р в ь ю . П р а к т и ч е с ко е
исследование выявило, что воздушные грузоперевозки в
России во многом зависят от пассажирских, так же
грузоперевозчики считают, что основными факторами,
влияющими на эффективность, являются общая
экономическая ситуация и повышение сборов на
терминальную обработку.
Стратегия снижения
издержек и сохранения места на рынке является
приоритетной для большинства компаний, и они не
видят других путей для развития. Данная магистерская
диссертация может послужить основой для кроссрегиональных исследований рынков воздушных
Ключевые слова
грузоперевозок среди развивающихся стран.
воздушные грузоперевозки; факторы эффективности;
проблемы и тренды.
4
Table of contents
Abstract
Introduction
Chapter 1. Air cargo transportation and operations: theory and global practices
8
1.1. Conceptual framework of air cargo transportation structure 8
1.2. Modern practices in airfreight managment
15
1.3. Russia-specific practices and research gap
24
Chapter 2. Research design & methodology
29
Chapter 3. Efficiency factors of air cargo transportation in Russia 39
3.1. Findings
39
3.2. Discussion
48
3.3. Contribution, limitations and future research
54
Conclusion
List of references
Introduction
5
Research area lies in the field of air cargo transportation. Key topics that underlie the
understanding of this phenomenon are problems of airlines and freight forwarders, general
underdevelopment of transportation logistics in Russia. Main research question that it is stated in
the thesis is “What are the factors affecting the efficiency of air transportation industry in
Russia?” The goal of the thesis is to identify key features of air cargo transportation market in
Russia.
In order to achieve this goal and answer the research question there will be a
combination of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods, both secondary and primary
data. There is going to be comparison of the results of the empirical study with modern practices
and other researches in order to achieve maximum validity of the results. The stages of the
research are the following:
Analysis of scientific articles, reports and empirical studies
A survey amongst freight carriers and forwarders in Russia
Two structured interviews with freight forwarders
This literature review involves sources from EBSCO, Elsevier and JSTOR databases. For
the search, the following key words were used: “air transportation”, “air cargo” and “Russia”,
“logistics”, “supply chain”.
This particular subject of research might be relevant for the following reasons. Air cargo
plays a crucial role in Russian economy because of countries territory and lack of roads.
Logistical issues and geographical location of several regions force business to choose air over
other means of transport. Economic crisis also has to be taken into account, especially in terms
of its impact on the industry and challenges that it has created. Understanding the trends, where
the whole industry is going is a crucial in terms of improving the current state of events.
Many of the existing studies in this area were focusing on one particular territory or region,
mainly the United States of America. However, there is a strong need to study air cargo
transportation in emerging markets, extend the geographical scope in 3PL research, particularly
to support practitioners as they expand import and export operations in other countries. Initial
literature review demonstrated that this topic still has a room for future research and it is hard to
do an empirical study in 3PL market, mostly due to its complexity. It also suggests that it would
be reasonable to implement more theoretical studies, using various methods of data collection.
Moreover, research specifically on Russian market seems to be even more underdeveloped.
Due to complexity of the data collection process and problems that the research in Russia
faces when it is needed to implement an empirical study, the focus of this particular paper would
6
be more general. Many researchers face obstacle related to low response rates. There has been a
number of studies focusing on Asian countries, however almost nothing related to air cargo
transportation in Russia. Therefore, the objective of this master thesis is to bridge this gap, by
making a more general market study, using different methods of data collection.
1. Air cargo transportation and operations : theory and global practices
7
1.1 Conceptual framework of air cargo transportation structure
The following part presents the overview on airfreight operations and transportation on a
global scale in order to identify crucial attributes and characteristics of this industry. In addition,
the objective is to find some practical issues that correlate with the theoretical background in this
area of research.
According to Feng et al. 2015, air transportation is a driving force of the world economy.
This is the main idea that could be easily found in any research or study on this topic. No
researcher seems to undermine the importance of future development of this industry. “ The air
cargo market has doubled in volume every 10 years since 1970, and this trend is expected to
continue over the next 20 years with an annual average growth rate of over 6 % ” (Chang et al.,
2007, 555). Much of this growth has come from the integrated sector and the ‘big 4’ operators
UPS, DHL, FedEx, and TNT. (Boeing, 2004). “Based on the cargo capacity of the main airlines
in the US, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region between 1995 and 2004 (as published on their
respective websites), the airfreight volume has grown, on average, 50% faster than the air
passenger volume in the past decade.” (Wong et al., 2009, 361)
Airfreight forwarder is a third-party logistics providers, that has air cargo services as its
main business. Today in case a company wants to decide what airfreight forwarder to choose, it
probably should use the following set of criteria:
infrastructural and informational abilities,
equipment and fleet, distributional reach and route network. The majority of third-party logistics
company provide services and solutions for the entire supply chain not only simple
transportation. (Yang et al., 2010) For this reason, the market is quite different from other
markets and has more complexity. (Petersen, 2007)
There are many companies that are involved in transporting air cargo from one point to
another; however, they can be classified into three main groups: airlines, freight forwarders and
integrated providers. The majority of airlines (especially internationally) are combination carriers
that carry both cargo and passengers. Air cargo can be shipped in freight airplanes and in
passenger aircrafts (almost 60 % of air cargo worldwide). The market structure is such that in
order for the airline to operate it must have connections with freight forwarders and agents who
act as an intermediary with customers. (Belavina & Girotra, 2012) Normally airlines do not
accept orders directly from customers, however in some cases an airline can serve as a forwarder
as well. Integrated companies provide solution for the entire supply chain and are responsible for
delivering goods from the origin to destination, working directly with customers and getting
round the usual role of freight forwarders. The integration of air and ground services became a
8
competitive advantage of integrated operators because a large number of manufacturing
companies have the urge to manage and control international distribution networks and supply
chains. This situation has been an accelerator of division of cargo services into different groups
(see Fig. 1). At the bottom stage, there are traditional cargo forwarders in which the forwarder is
an intermediary between the customer and the carrier, responsible for transportation on ground,
customs regulations and booking a space for the carrier. (Bowen & Leinbach, 2004)
Figure 1. Freight services.
Source: Bowen & Leinbach, 2004
Airfreight transportation has a connection with passenger transportation, obviously, because
both services employs aircraft as core mean of transport. Feng et al. 2015 in their study of
different publications have identified several differences between two above-mentioned types.
Airfreight transportation has a higher unpredictability level than passenger transportation in
terms of capacity availability. Essentially, cargo forwarders have higher volatilities when dealing
with capacity management. (Feng et al., 2015; Mongeau & Bes, 2003)
The reason for this is that usually customers of cargo shippers have to make a booking way
ahead of the delivery date, whereas passengers can book their ticket couple of hours before the
flight. Therefore, passenger airlines have more flexibility. (Wadud, 2013) “Cargo capacity
forecasting is significantly more complex than passenger aircraft capacity forecasting. While the
capacity of a passenger aircraft is fixed by its number of seats, cargo capacity depends on the
container types used, which are further specified by multiple dimensions. For instance, the
capacity may be enough in terms of volume but not in terms of weight when a heavy cargo
9
arrives. Multiple dimensions are a key feature of freight, which render both complexity and
uncertainty to airfreight capacity management.” (Feng et al., 2015, 323)
The same as passenger transportation, airfreight operations contain both indirect and direct
costs. Direct cost is a spending related to buying or renting the airplane and necessary facilities,
as in combination with the service charges. Indirect cost is a spending connected with
management expenses and ground handling services. Moreover, operation costs also include
variable and fixed costs. FC that do not depend on the distance contain spending on takin off and
landing, security, and ground operations. On the contrary, variable costs (i.e. the cost of fuel),
depend on the distance of the flight. (Chao & Hsu, 2013; Guimera et al., 2005)
D. Wenzel in his article for Nord/LB makes a general review of airfreight market. Due to
specifics of this type of transportation, in comparison with other types, it is considered as a more
value-adding type. It is also more frequently used for transportation of items that are more
valuable and items that have to be delivered in a shorter period. Therefore, it is only logical that
from the demand side, customer are willing to pay more to use air shipment. “The air cargo
market is highly fragmented with fierce competition and excess capacity. The generally low
switching costs for end customers intensify competition among the carriers. As a result, prices
for air freight set rather supply oriented than cost-covering.” (Wenzel D., 2015, 3) From the 3PL
providers point of view there is a significant difference in demand in different parts of the world.
For this reason, there is a problem of proper usage of airplane capacity. “The air cargo market is
heavily concentrated and around 70% of the global freighter fleet is used by the top 20 air cargo
carriers.” (Wenzel D., 2015, 3)
Zou et al. 2013 acknowledges that the increase in freight volumes establishes a need for
airlines that work with cargo as well to have appropriate and efficient revenue management
schemes in order to minimize their losses. With regard to passenger transportation, such schemes
are quite common and widespread and have been used for almost two decades. In fact, most of
the methods were applied for freight management and therefore cargo operations are still highly
dependent on ground rules of passenger schemes of revenue control. It is probably not a question
of debate that airfreight is not the same as passenger operations; for example, shippers’ booking
patterns, capacity allocation uncertainty, demand forecasting and therefore passenger revenue
management schemes should not be unadvisedly applied to the air cargo sector. (Zou et al., 2013)
Besides market researches, there has been a conceptual study by Becker and Wald (2010) on
airfreight revenue management. In this, article authors focus on the main challenges of revenue
management (ACRM) and establish some ways of addressing them. Authors claim that
passenger revenue management schemes should not be unadvisedly applied to the air cargo
10
sector. Authors mention three main challenges in their paper: “complexities, trade-offs and
organization. Capacity offer for the transportation is not a constant figure; moreover, it is a
variable that depends on many others factors (i.e. amount of fuel).” (Becker & Wald, 2010, 180)
The networks are becoming more complex and number of transportation routes is extending,
so sea and train shipment has also be taken into account. (Derigs et al., 2009) From the demand
prospective, authors acknowledge unequal trade lanes as an important complexity issue. It means
that a particular shipment at a booking stage can range from zero to over tendering. Trade-offs
are important problem of ACRM in terms of creating a mismatch of goals inside Revenue
Management and how this goals correlate to the targets of other department. For example,
utilization is a top priority for ACRM but usually is not so important for sales department. The
same thing exists for profitability that is again much more important for RM than sales. (Becker
& Wald, 2010)
The last complexity that authors mention is organization. Becker and Wald suggest that
ACRM integration in the organizational system is de-centralized. It, basically, means that
revenue management can reach its goals on a local but not a global scale. In the last part of the
article, authors discuss ways of managing the challenges. In order to deal with complexities
companies have to use “IT integration and data quality” and “forecasting and
optimization/decision support methods”. Reliable data and forecasts from all the dimension has
to be applied in this case. In addition, from the supply side efficient workflow is important. In
other words, live tracking of item fluctuations and adjusting the capacity according to the
changes. In terms of organizational issues, authors suggest the target of ACRM should go in line
with goals of other departments. Sales and revenue management should also be measured against
profitability, utilization and revenue” and coincide with corporate targets of the firm. (Becker &
Wald, 2010)
In general, there has been only a number of studies related to air freight RM questions.
Kasilingam, 1996 established the main differences between passenger revenue management and
freight revenue management. Very often passenger aircrafts carry cargo as well, so the amount of
cargo depends on the type of the plane, number of passengers on board and how much luggage
they have. “Therefore, air cargo capacity is stochastic in nature, and the uncertainty makes
capacity allocation decisions more complex.” (Becker and Nadja, 2007, 176).
One more
important aspect of cargo that it is different to passengers is multi-dimensional structure of cargo
capacity (weight, volume, and position in the aircraft cargo hold), flexibility in routing and path
selection, and the cargo assignment request before the general sales. (Li et al., 2012)
11
In terms of costs and financing airfreight security, there is a difference in opinions. This is
mainly because no one really has the intention to overspend. To begin with, governments are
obviously under severe budget constraints. Although, operators will argue that they are not able
to guaranty the integrity of their cargo when it goes further in the supply chain to be bundled for
shipping. In addition, the vast majority of small forwarders do not possess the required amounts
of money to make necessary investments in security. On the other hand, each large integrated
operator often spends over 50 million euros a year on security. Ground handlers and airline
companies claim that they already spend the cost of maintaining and controlling quality
certification. Because the independent validator issue remains unclear (who certifies the
validator, which are the standards, the price, etc.), the reaction of the different stakeholders is
very uncertain. (Domingues et al., 2014)
Speaking about the costs of freight transportation by aircrafts it is important to mention
ground handling costs. The activities that are related to freight handling are integrated or act as
an integral part of airfreight supply chain. Apart from freight handling, such chain has different
stages hat depend on various actors involved in it. The so-called freight-forwarder is extremely
important in the chain: it is responsible for door-to-door shipment of items from the point of
sending to the point of receiving. Freight-forwarder plays a role of an agent in the relationship
with air carrier, usually the airline and reserves a spot for a particular shipment, quite often
together with other orders. (Janic, 2015)
The handling of air freight usually is divided to three following activities:
Warehouse handling: collecting of freight for export flows, distribution of freight among
the forwarding agents for import flows, building up and breaking down of pallets in the
handling warehouse.
Ramp transport: transportation of freight from the warehouse to the aircraft and vice
versa
Ramp handling: loading and unloading the aircraft (Burghouwt et al. 2014)
Changing the topic back to security, all experts agreed that 100% screening is not feasible,
and therefore a risk-based approach is in order. This is consistent with both political strategic
goals for strengthening air cargo security and the recommended policy package for the basis of a
risk-based approach that proactively adapts security procedures to threat and risk levels. This, in
12
turn, relates directly to the need of one harmonized air cargo security regulatory framework.
(Macário et al., 2012).
The next conceptual practice related to cargo shipment is intermodality. Intermodality is a
feature of a transportation network in which more than one types of transport are used in order to
organize a door-to-door delivery. Moreover, multimodality can be a characteristic of to what
extent the transportation network is integrated. In that sense, higher level of intermodality results
in higher integration and interconnection amongst modes and a more effective transportation
network in general. (Reyes et al., 2013)
Intermodal cargo transportation service includes a number of integrated cargo players. The
first one is called a Freight Forwarder, which is a company that operates with different agents in
order to use every party involved fully, and enhance the overall efficiency of the transportation
network. Those companies are extremely important in terms of generating synergies, which
increase the total effectiveness and decrease unnecessary activities. Therefore, it is possible to
say that the overall productivity is more than just a simple adding up the result every single
player in the market. Speaking about multimodal transport, it is made of various single and nonintegrated transport operations and thus, the overall productivity is just a result of the simple
adding up of different independent transportation operations. (Azzam et al., 2013)
Calling upon the freight forwarders, it should be noted that they all are not equally skilled.
Different freight forwarders follow different processes of intermodal cargo transportation
services and as such, they are likely to obtain different performances from the same set of dual
systems. The air transport industry is going through a paradigm shift, due to the disintegration of
the concept of modal superiority of the sector (Macário, 2011).
Typically regarded as independent nodes of the transport network airports benefit from a
monopolistic market positioning, which allows them to keep their attractiveness even if they
don’t have a connection to the overall transport network. However, this reality is changing
significantly and nowadays the interaction between transport modes is more intensive than what
it was in the past, which has led to the concept of transport integration, co-modality and
intermodality. Airports are no longer exceptions, being now important multi-modal interchanges
and central nodes in the network. (Reyes et al., 2013)
Air- and land-based connectivity is a necessary condition for the success of airports and the
development of an airport city and other similar concepts. Although not all airports have
embraced the concept of airport city, they all have been affected by the liberalization and
deregulation phenomena and consequently, have changed their business model. The following
13
picture depicts the evolution of airport business models over the last few decades. ( Allroggen &
Malina, 2014) Over time, airports have reduced their dependency on the aviation business and
progressively increased the amount of non-aviation activity (such as: retailing, conference
centers, amusement parks, business centers, etc.), in particular in the landside of the airport (from
over 95% in the 1970s down to 30% currently). Thus, current airport business models are based
on the generation of traffic, showing that the profitability of airports does not necessarily depend
on the quantity of passengers, but rather the number of people that use the airport for any reason
(for example, as a transfer between land-based modes of transport). (Macário, 2011).
Nowadays, an airport’s economic development depends largely on the capacity to induce
air- and land-based traffic to feed their non-aviation business. Consequently, in the current
context fundamental conditions for the success of airports include (air- and land-based)
connectivity, integration with the modal transport networks or the existence of co-modal
services. (Lehner, 2013) The advance of high-speed railroads (HSR) brought major change to the
dynamics of competition and cooperation with air transport. Until that moment, air transport
ruled was undoubtedly the preferred mode of transport for longer distances; however, the
situation completely changed with the construction of the first HSR routes. The reductions on the
transport time on well-known rail routes can go up to 65%. Such reductions in time changed the
transport paradigm and many passengers shifted from air to rail transport. (Reyes et al., 2013)
Another key aspect of freight transportation and logistics in general is sustainable practices.
Referring to the past and current small- and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) practices and their
endeavors to engage into airfreight supply chain and airfreight network, a set of implications can
be drawn to facilitate future-oriented directions of SMEs. The central clue is a need to decide
where to compete and how to compete, it is an external view. On the one hand, SMEs need to
clarify their strategic position in the supply chain and strategic focus. On the other hand, there is
a deficit in internal capabilities, trust built up, management skills, team building, understanding
of business etc. Again, when recalling the duality of markets and resources. Hence, combination
of both perspectives is needed. (Beifert et al., 2013)
The present research argues that SMEs involved into the air cargo forwarding or handling
services as well as regional airports as the airfreight operations have to intensify collaboration
partners with large and globally operating enterprises in the air cargo industry. This enables the
small businesses, first, a better relationship positioning in the supply chain, since large airfreight
forwarders as the first-tier logistics providers have focused on delivering multiple performance
based on their competences. In this sense, SMEs could focus on the specific competences and
offer differentiated services, thus meeting qualitative requirements of their customers. Through
14
specific and differentiated services SMEs and regional airports are capable to gain a strategic
position on the niche air cargo market, which is not fully penetrated by large air cargo forwarders
and handling enterprises. In this regard, they could place more focus on building competences in
the field of warehousing, airfreight handling and transportation. (Beifert et al., 2013)
1.2 Modern practices in airfreight management
Apart from conceptual studies, there has been a few empirical studies that are worth
mentioning in this literature review. These studies in the majority are focusing on some rather
narrow aspects of the research area. The following studies were conducted from the point of
view of supply, 3PL companies.
Swan (2011) has analyzed market structure of air transportation industry and has come to the
following conclusions. First of all the cost structure of cargo shipment market differs from
production. “Transportation as a product cannot be stored for later sale as an inventory of
finished automobiles might be stored. A transportation firm that has assembled the resources to
transport goods must actually have something to transport before it can produce.” (Swan, 2011,
97) In terms of supply-demand structure, researcher has concluded that the total demand for
cargo shipping does not depend on a price in the short tеrm. Therefore, economies of scale lead
to circumstances that the lower number of 3PL providers might result in “lower cost service”.
This situation occurs due to the fact, that this kind of service has a significant amount of “fixed
and semifixed costs”. (Swan, 2011)
Ashenbaum, Arnold & Rabinovich (2005) acknowledge that there has been many studies in
third party logistics and there were many attempts to evaluate the level of usage. Although, based
on their literature review of publications about logistics, these studies have seldom been applied
to research in logistics. The goal was to get an understanding of how third-party logistics (3PL)
operations have changed over the time. In this case, the researchers focused on the market of
United States of America. “Third-party logistics usage cannot be studied in a laboratory, so
multiple studies in different settings and with different samples are appropriate to accumulate
data on this phenomenon.” (Ashenbaum et al., 2005, 43) As a research tool, authors used metaanalysis in order to create an overview of previous studies in this area. They were trying to
evaluate existing studies based on impression of peer researches and compare different
publications using “subjective criteria”. (Ashenbaum et al., 2005)
15
Ashenbaum, Arnold & Rabinovich were looking at growth rates in 3PL and as a basis for
their analysis, they compared two studies by Robert Lieb and John Langley, Jr. To the sake of my
own research, in describing their findings the focus will be only on transportation. Therefore, it is
important to say that transportation outsourcing in US from 1996 to 2004 has been growing at 58 % per year, which again proves the fact that logistics market has been growing not only for the
past several years. For this reason, the general lack of research in 3PL and its irrelevance,
especially in air cargo, seems questionable at least. (Paleari et al., 2010)
Ashenbaum et al. focused on US market of third-party logistics. Jankiewicz & HuderekGlapska (2015) have researched the European market of air transport after the influence of
liberalization. The focus of study was on changes that happened after the liberalization of air
transportation market in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, authors tried to compare both
markets in terms of development. These finding are important in terms research in Russia, since
it is an emerging market. Researchers established that population change plays a big role in
shaping air transportation market. “Using econometric tools, the paper also attempted to identify
any similarities and differences with regard to the impact of socio-economic factors on the
activities of air transport sectors. The analysis also provided insight on the way some key factors
that shape air transport markets work in emerging markets. Air transport has a high sensitivity to
cyclical fluctuations (the influence of GDP and employment levels). The economic situation,
including labor market conditions, also had great importance for development paths.”
(Jankiewicz & Huderek-Glapska, 2015, 53)
Gardiner and Ison (2008) in their international survey of airports established key factors that
are taken into account by cargo airline when choosing the airport for their operations. According
to different predictions the number of cargo airplanes will tripled in the nearest 10 year, “many
of which will be for the non-integrated sector, suggests that these carriers will be heavily
involved in locating new services in the future”. (Gardiner & Ison, 2008, 57) In the study,
authors also used three interviews with the airlines.
In the end of the research, Gardiner and Ison obtained factors that according to them have
an influence “on the geography of non-integrated cargo airlines”. “These factors can either
positively contribute to an airline’s decision by attracting them to an airport, or they can
contribute negatively by dissuading or preventing airlines from operating to a particular airport.”
(Gardiner & Ison, 2008, 58) The name of the paper assumes that respondents had to be from
different parts of the world, in other words international. The objective of the interviews was to
gain a more in-depth perception of the results of the questionnaire.
Therefore, the airlines
interviewed were from Europe, the United States and Asia. Among two airport that participated
16
in the study, one was European and one from the US. As a result, Gardiner and Ison, using
above-mentioned methods of data collection, “identified 15 factors which can influence the
location decision of a non-integrated cargo airline.” (Gardiner & Ison, 2008, 59) The list of the
key factors turned out to be narrower than 25-factor list that was represented in the original
questionnaire. In addition, it is worth mentioning that authors categorized these factors as Push
and Pull. The list of the findings is presented below (see Figure 2). (Gardiner & Ison, 2008)
Figure 2. Push and pull factors.
Source: Gardiner and Ison, 2008
The study of Starkie (2002) claims that the market segment and the availability of other
airports in the proximity affect the market position of the airport.
Usually, the competition
amongst and airport market power are examined in the papers according to passenger
transportation. In the scope of airfreight, airport competition was not a popular topic amongst
researchers. However, as airfreight transportation is a relatively independent business, airport
competition in terms of freight can be relatively strong, especially in Europe, where main
airports are often located within a few hours of driving from each other. Thus, a system of
criteria that cargo companies use for choosing the airports is necessary for both governments and
airports to make those airports attractive for cargo airlines and, by all means, increase economic
activity. (Starkie, 2002)
Kupfer et al. 2016 in their article discuss the choice process that airlines use when deciding
the airport and its location for their cargo operations. In this process, airlines consider a set of
17
different factors, which officials and airports do not necessarily are able to affect. Although, the
state is in position to influence the growth of the industries affected by air transportation in order
to create a more attractive area for freight operations. In addition, governments can provide a
stable regulatory environment for the airlines as well as a framework for nighttime flights, which
make a region more attractive to airlines.
It is true because airports are crucial part of the
economy in terms of value-adding activities and attractive and competitive airports are
important, especially from a government’s perspective. (Kupfer et al., 2016)
The authors of the article also implemented an empirical study in order to evaluate the
compromises that airlines make when choosing between different airports. They collected stated
choice data from 26 airlines and used this data as input for various logit models. The results
showed that, within the scope of the research, the presence of passenger operations is not a
significant factor in the airport choice for scheduled cargo operations. This conclusion does not
depend on whether the airline is an all-cargo airline or combination carrier. Moreover, to some
extent, it contradicts with previous studies that were described above by Gardiner and Ison,
2008, in which passenger operations turned out to be important for combination carriers. (Kupfer
et al., 2016)
A first reason for this difference between the studies can be found in the different scope.
While Gardiner and Ison (2008) look at the airport choices worldwide, Kupfer et al. 2016 only
focus on airport choices in Europe, where cargo is often transferred to trucks for the last stretch
instead of being transferred to another aircraft. Second, study of Kupfer only covers freighter
operations, which are by nature less related to passenger operations than the transport of air
cargo in passenger aircraft. Third, it is not uncommon for experimental studies to yield opposite
results than observational studies. (Lordan et al., 2014)
Gardiner and Ison were looking at non-integrated sector of cargo airline. However, in a
different research authors investigated possibilities of collaborative activities. Ankersmit, Rezaei
& Tavasszy (2014) researched horizontal air transport collaboration. In their study, collaboration
is defined as a joint activity of at least two or three freight forwarders. The difference between
collaborative and non-collaborative situation is represented below (see Figure 3 and Figure 4).
The study was based “on a selective flow of air cargo transport of three forwarding companies
and one air cargo handler” that operate at a Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. Authors suggest that
the objective of such collaboration is to justify its usefulness from a point of view of single 3PL
provider’s transport. For this reason “the most important differences of combined and single
transport are quantified using the following KPIs gathered from a dozen forwarding companies
at Schiphol:
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amount of transport movements
amount of cargo processed
transport costs per kilo
average throughput time of shipments” (Ankersmit, Rezaei & Tavasszy, 2014, 175-176)
Figure 3. Non-collaborative transport situation
Source: Ankersmit, Rezaei & Tavasszy, 2014
Figure 4. Collaborative transport situation
Source: Ankersmit, Rezaei & Tavasszy, 2014
Ankersmit, Rezaei & Tavasszy (2014) used both qualitative and quantitative methods of data
collection (interviews and data sampling). In order to establish the opportunities for
collaboration, authors used simulation method. As a result, they implemented a case study at
Schiphol Airport and established that there are significant indicators that in the nearest future it
will be hard for single companies to operate in air cargo market. The market has opportunities
for combination carriers and horizontal collaboration that involves transportation of a number of
forwarders at main freight airports. Although it is worth mentioning that seasonality should be
19
taken into account when we are taking about collaboration. This happens due to the fact, that
different types of cargo have certain fluctuations in demand during the year. Therefore, “the
primary focus should be on collaborating when it involves cargo of a more general nature that is
not affected as much by seasonality.” (Ankersmit et al., 2014, 177)
After implementing the simulation, authors concluded that collaborative activities could be
beneficial for single cargo shippers. There is a higher number of individual shipments at a
particular time, higher frequency picking up and deliveries for smaller forwarding companies
without an increase in transport costs. Average throughput time of shipments for all collaborating
companies is increased as well. Researchers mention that collaboration significantly decreases
transportation costs for all the parties involved in the delivery chain. Moreover, collaboration
results in more efficient use of resources and decreases the average load factor of individual
forwarder transport fleet. (Ankersmit et al., 2014)
Chao et al. 2013 in their study provided a market segmentation of airline cargo transport
according to service requirements of airfreight forwarders. Research was aimed at identifying the
factors that influence cargo carriers and forwarders choice of the airline, by doing so authors
tried to explore the problem of market segmentation. Authors used questionnaire as a Data
collection method and cluster analysis for market segmentation. The questionnaire was designed
according to suggestions in previous publications of different authors and interview with 10
experts in the research area, regarding service attributes of airfreight companies in Taiwan. (Chao
et al., 2013)
“The sample of airfreight forwarders was selected from the list of registered members of the
Association of Air Freight Forwarding and Logistics in Taiwan. The researchers have identified
36 service attributes. A number of service attributes in the end were established as significant to
the respondents. These attributes are “cargo safety, freight rate, cargo tracing and tracking, flight
punctuality, and ease of getting cabin space”. (Chao et al., 2013, 1678)
Subsequently, Chao, Lirn & Shang used factor analysis to split 36 service attributes of
airline cargo transportation to smaller sets of factors. They were able to identify significant
patterns and group their results into factors. The airfreight forwarder respondents were separated
into different market segments using cluster analysis. Authors acknowledged that “a large sample
would ensure greater validity of the findings in reflecting the actual situation”. As a result, six
crucial service attributes, three market segments were identified: “professional service-oriented,
empathy-oriented, and express service oriented airfreight forwarders.” (Chao et al., 2013, 16781680)
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Above mentioned articles were focusing on the supply side of the market, however there is
a number of studies that had demand estimation as an objective. Totamane, Dasgupta & Rao in
their paper tried to develop a model for air cargo demand forecasting. Big airplanes, such as
passenger aircrafts, freight aircrafts, and charter aircrafts, are mainly involved in airfreight
transportation. In terms of passenger transportation, freight supply and distribution depends on
passenger flight schedules, which are organized according to passenger flows, thus the demand
does not consist of passengers alone, and freight aircrafts are a crucial part of airfreight
transportation. (Totamane et al., 2014)
In the result of the simulation that was implemented for different air carriers, authors
concluded that their model was able to estimate demand with significant accuracy. In this model,
they used some “generic predictors, such as time-varying functions, holidays, weekends, and so
on.” Obtained results help to increase average cargo load factors by 9-12 %. Although, the
model can be improved by using a bigger number of predictors and region-specific factors.
(Totamane et al., 2014)
May et al. (2014) study was based on the Virgin Atlantic Cargo’s case. The main problem of
the company was that inside the supply chain the necessary capacity was hard to predict. This is
actually more of a whole industry problem than a specific company’s problem. Freight
forwarders do not pay for unutilized capacity previously reserved, the actual flight capacity of
each flight is not precisely known until immediately prior to departure. The goal of the study was
to optimize the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that were provided by Virgin Atlantic Cargo.
Authors implemented Fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making tool in order to prioritize the KPIs.
They mention the fact that network optimization is the most important KPI in this case. Other
outcome-based KPIs of critical importance are optimizing density and overbooking. (May et al.
2014)
It is possible to say based on research of May et al. (2014) that using KPIs and
prioritizing them is a feasible solution for improvement in supply chain management.
Amaruchkul et al. (2011) provided another solution, which can improve SCM. Their study
was focusing on air-cargo capacity contracts. In the paper, authors discuss the current situation in
the service chain. Usually, airlines and cargo shippers have an agreement for using aircrafts,
because cargo shippers do not have their own air fleet. Therefore, they “purchase bulk cargo
capacity by contracting with airlines”. When shipping is done across boarder, airlines usually
offer additional services for carriers, for example, customs paperwork. The question of the study
was how a freight forwarder should choose allotments and financial terms of its contract.
“Carriers (airlines) use medium-term contracts to allot bulk cargo capacity to forwarders who
21
deliver consolidated loads for each flight in the contractual period (season). Carriers also sell
capacity to direct-ship customers on each flight.” (Amaruchkul et al., 2011, 35-36)
As a result of the study, researchers “propose contracts in which the forwarder pays a lump
sum in exchange for a guaranteed capacity allotment and receives a refund for each unit of
unused capacity according to a pre-announced refund rate.” (Amaruchkul et al. 2007, 465) In this
case, it is rather important to acknowledge that researchers only studied the case when cargo
forwarder did not have its own aircraft. To help airlines deal with the imbalance in the demand
for different routes, they proposed the tying capacity allocation mechanism. The mechanism
enables airlines to use the leverage provided by a scarce resource to foreclose sales in, and
thereby monopolize, an underutilized one. Airlines make the leverage work by excluding some
forwarders from partial business temporarily and making the selected partners collaborate
through good and bad conditions by rewarding them with scarcer resources. Airlines gain in
terms of profitability by adjusting the resource allocation structure in light of resource utilization
efficiency; that is, the enclosed forwarders have lower resource unitization efficiency from the
selected forwarders. The effectiveness of the proposed mechanism has been validated with a case
study. Both overall tonnage and revenue have recorded significant improvement. (Amaruchkul et
al., 2011)
One of the most promising opportunities in terms of air transportation services that might be
suitable for SMEs or entrepreneurship is a so-called “Flying Truck” concept or Road Feeder
Service (RFS), which would enable providing differentiated, specialized qualitative services. In
fact, the pure airfreight-forwarding sector implies very high investments for the buying, leasing,
maintaining, etc. of the machinery park, i.e. aircrafts. It will be rather a provocative assumption
that SMEs may possess the required financial resources to start / enter pure air freight operations.
(Hall, 2011)
However, according to the secondary research data gained by the Baltic Air Cargo project,
among ca. 18 companies that offer airfreight transport services in Germany only few possess
real aircrafts. The whole fleet of majority of airfreight forwarders consists of normal trucks only
and the majority of these transport companies that have been successfully operating on the air
cargo transport market are regarded as SMEs. And that were not the huge investments in the
“hard-ware” infrastructure, i.e. aircrafts that allowed them to enter airfreight for warding
business, but rather strategically conceptual and “soft” changes. Rather small and medium transport companies with a “fleet” ranging from 10 to 30 ordinary trucks qualified themselves for air
cargo transport business. According to the results of the “Baltic.AirCargo.Net”, the importance
of the RFS is constantly growing nowadays, e.g. in 2012 the relative volume of air cargo
22
transported by “flying trucks” in the biggest air cargo hub in the Baltic Sea Region - Copenhagen
Airport is ca. 35% from the total cargo volume. (Siren et al., 2013)
The definition of “flying trucks” is scheduled trucks operating between two airports only, on
behalf of an air carrier. Trucks are operating under a flight number and the cargo is moved under
same conditions as normal air cargo and the liability is in accordance with the Montreal
Convention. (Ou et al., 2010) In other words, “flying truck” operates as a normal truck between
to airports (departure from an airport security zone – and arrival to another airport security zone
only) on so-called Air Waybill (AWB) or air consignment. The same as a real air carrier, a
“flying truck” might have several route numbers or flight numbers if it is transporting freight
from more than one airline. The flying trucks are treated and handled exactly in the same way
like real aircrafts, i.e. the “flying trucks” possess herewith exactly the same insurance as if the
goods were transported by aircraft and on route number, they are fulfilling all custom and
security regulations set by the relevant authorities as if the goods were really flying by air. The
cargo transported by “flying trucks” is a real air cargo that must have fulfilled all required
security and transport norms that apply to air cargo. (Grandjot et al., 2007)
Hsu, Chen and Chen, 2013 implemented a study on cargo service strategies. The results show
that an airline should use smaller aircraft and offer greater frequency of flights for express
service when shipping volume is low. Thus, not only airline operation costs but also shippers’
inventory costs can be reduced by increasing flight frequency. The results also suggest that an
airline should provide greater flight frequencies for high-value and time-sensitive cargos because
shippers of such goods prefer efficient delivery. On the other hand, in the cargo market with
mainly low time-value goods, airlines should not provide express shipping service because the
shipping volume attracted by express service would be small, which does not justify the extra
service cost. The findings imply that the higher the proportion of high time-value cargos to total
shipping cargos, the larger the niche for airlines to provide express service, and the more the
airline can charge. (Hsu, Chen and Chen, 2013)
In addition, the researchers found out that for perishable goods that need to be stored in a
low temperature environment to avoid quality decay, shippers of frozen goods can save much
more in decay costs than shippers of fresh or chilled if temperature control service is provided.
The findings suggest that the lower the temperature environment in which the cargos need to be
stored, the higher the shipping price the airline can charge. The results of different air cargo
markets show that, no matter how great the shipping demand for perishable goods, temperature
control service always belongs in the optimal shipping service combinations, which conforms to
the airline’s current operation in practice. (Hsu, Chen and Chen, 2013)
23
It is rather important to say that the list of empirical studies is not limited by the studies
described in this chapter. However, there has not been that many researches in the field of air
cargo transportation. There is a room for future studies, especially region-specific. Overview of
literature for the Russian market is represented below.
1.3 Russia-specific practices and research gap
According to RBK Research 2014, nowadays in Russia there is no authority, which regulates
cargo shipments through governmental transport system. Each type of transportation is regulated
separately, so that there is no collaboration between players involved in the process. It is
impossible to organize shipment in a way that it is mutually beneficial for all the parties taking
part in the business. In 2012, the growth in market volume for air logistical services was
estimated to be at the level of 6 %. (RBK Research, 2014)
However, currently the access to markets with regard to provision of complete route and
operational rights is decelerated by numerous factors, including airport capacity and insufficient
level of infrastructure. Despite certain improvements in the field of regulation of air
transportation market in Russia, it should be acknowledged that the problems, related with
establishment and operation of federal executive bodies authorized agencies in the field of air
transpiration and governmental regulation, are not solved up until now. (Katyshev & Utepov,
2013)
Moreover, it is even the case that Russian air carriers, in general, can successfully compete
with foreign ones. If we look at the profit structure, Russian companies have 54 % of profit from
cargo shipment, whereas in Western companies it is not more than 30%. RBK Research 2014
claims that in 2012 that total market volume of Russian market was exceeding $ 12.7 billion. In
terms of foreign trade, 58 % of all shipments are done by sea, 36 % - by railroad and about 4 %
by road. Air transportation is more relevant for shipments inside Russian territory. Also, in
maritime transport about 95 % of the Russian market is held by foreign companies. Although
Russian market is growing, its potential has not been used to full extent. (RBK Research, 2014)
Despite the fact that freight forwarding is a growing market in Russia it has not been many
studies in this area. Fisenko, 2011 discussed the problems and challenges of Russian transport
and logistics. In his paper, there is a number of suggestions of how to increase efficiency of
24
logistics operation in Russia. The main issue here is the logistics problem of the delivery of
goods by national transport system, especially in organizing and managing the railway, road and
pipeline networks, as well as air transport, maritime and river transportation with the necessary
infrastructure. In order to achieve that goal author suggests that companies need to use software
for integration of their own materials and information and supply chain as a whole. In addition,
efficient supply chain management leads to saving resources in various industries, not only 3PL
market. (Fisenko, 2011)
The paper also suggests that Russian market has a room for forecasting and prediction
activities. Accurate forecasts enable to anticipate and to organize accordingly resource allocation
in order to face upcoming challenges instead of implementing expensive changes in capacities
boot (redistribution) process and use of reserves. In a more general way, the logistical
infrastructure remains the main problem in Russian market. The economy loses more than 1.8
trillion rubles form poor conditions of road infrastructure every year. This amount equals to
about 2 % of GDP, which of course affects the cost structure of any business that uses
transportation services. “The transport component in the cost of production in Russia has reached
20% or more”, compared to less than 10% in developed countries. Such poor condition of road
infrastructure leaves companies no other choice than use air as a type of cargo shipment.
(Fisenko, 2011)
“Another problem is irrational development of goods and services distribution systems (the
absence of a deliberate strategy of distribution systems in industry and commerce, lack of
organized commodity markets at large and medium wholesale), inadequate and unstable rates of
modern packaging industry development.” (Fisenko, 2011, 35)
There are almost no empirical studies, specifically to Russian market. The one that has been
done, is by Moser, Kuklinski & Weidmann (2014). They made a case study of third party
logistics service providers in Russia. Initially authors have identified 15 companies that matched
their criteria for research purposes (“country of origin, international business operations,
significant local operations and at least ten years of operational experience in Russia”).
Eventually, due to different reasons, the list of 3PL providers consisted of four companies. Those
companies were Russian subsidiaries of four major 3PLs with Western European backgrounds.
“All case companies had more than ten years of business experience in Russia, employed locally
several dozens to more than 1.000 workers and provided services in the fields of transportation,
contract logistics, value–added services, express deliveries and customs clearance using all
modes of transport. “ (Moser et al., 2014, 315)
25
Moser, Kuklinski & Weidmann used interviews as a data collection method for their case
study. After those interviews, they compared the results to existing theoretical background from
various articles and newspapers. “All interviewees highlighted human resources as a key
resource for their operations in Russia.” (Moser et al. 2014, 317) As a part of that problem,
respondents also mentioned lack of transparency and big employee turnover rates. There is a gap
in the educational sector, so western companies have invest in training of their employees. In the
end of the analysis, researchers obtained the following findings, regarding financial,
technological and organization resources:
“Western companies in Russia can operate independently of the financial markets
except for taxation aspects.
Western companies in Russia adapt their financial resources primarily to the
requirements of the political system.
Western companies in Russia do not experience any major influence on their
technological resources from any institutional context in Russia.
Western companies in Russia can leverage their international organization structure
to win international customers in Russia.
Western companies in Russia have to adapt their international organization standards
to attract local Russian customers.” (Moser et al. 2014, 320)
Regarding asset management, it is hard for foreign companies to meet the requirements of
both Russian system and their contracts with business throughout the world. In addition, there is
a mismatch between the type of relationships between western companies and their customers
and local suppliers. Usually, relationships with international clients are long-term and with local
suppliers are short-term. In general, since Russia is a transaction economy, the highest influence
have human resources and overall misbalance between the situation in Russian and in developed
economies.
Research of Moser et al. (2014) was focused on the effect of transaction economy and
involved case study of foreign companies that operate in Russia. There is a lack of research in air
cargo transportation and especially for Russian market. This gap will be discussed below.
26
Research gap
Maloni & Carter (2006) have reviewed empirical studies in third-party logistics over 15 years.
According to them, “much of the existing 3PL research assessed one geographical region,
generally, the United States. Even rapidly developing economies throughout the world,
especially in Asia and in China in particular, there is still a need for extended geographical scope
in 3PL research, particularly to support practitioners as they expand import and export operations
in other countries” (Maloni & Carter 2006). They also suggest that it would be reasonable to
implement more theoretical studies, using various methods of data collection. It is hard to do an
empirical study in 3PL market, due to its complexity. Moreover, when gathering data researchers
face obstacle related to low response rates.
Feng et al. (2015) have also discussed the opportunities for potential research. It mostly
relate to capacity management, terminal operations and supply chain coordination. The first
topic that authors identify is capacity planning. “The available cargo capacity is uncertain
because of many factors, such as aircraft payload, belly space, weather conditions, fuel weight,
number of passengers on board, and passengers’ luggage. This issue makes the forecasting of air
cargo capacity a very complicated problem.” (Feng et al., 2015, 325)
In addition, airlines are inflexible in terms capacities because quite often they use the same
aircrafts for both passenger and cargo transportation. It is impossible to cancel the flight if there
is a lot of room for cargo because passengers have to be served as well. “Airlines may address
the imbalance in cargo demands by tying the capacities of the two types of routes and
incentivizing forwarders to act in a desirable way.” (Shiao et al., 2013, 168)
Amaruchkul et al. 2011 have researched pricing and contracting but there still plenty of
opportunities for research in this area. Such as flexible and multi-leg contracts.
Feng et al.
(2015) have identified “three types of flexible contracts that are specific and are assumed to be
potentially effective; these are dynamic orders with a high price, fixed orders with punishment,
and overall fixed orders.” (Feng et al., 2015, 327)There is a lack of studies on a larger scale, for
example, for the entire network. Regarding airport terminal, authors suggest that “key parameters
and cost functions for such a simulation can be derived by data mining. This study will be crossmethodological in nature. From another perspective, integrated operations of the cargo terminal
can also be modeled as a stochastic programming problem.” (Feng et al., 2015, 328)
Supply chain coordination was discussed in the previous part of the literature review.
However, there is still a lot of opportunities for research. Demand forecasting a crucial part of
27
this problem. Hihara (2014) has established that “two most important players in an air cargo
supply chain are the airlines and the forwarders. A great challenge that airlines face is demand
estimation and capacity planning. An effective approach to improve capacity estimation is to
make forwarders share their demand information.” (Hihara, 2014, 89)
However, it is not necessarily good for air carriers. They might get unreasonably larger prices.
“What complicates the matter is that in the air cargo industry, an airline usually works with
multiple forwarders of a non-negligible size, and conversely, a forwarder collaborates with
multiple airlines. This scenario differs from the situation in the goods supply chain literature and
makes the mechanism design in the air cargo industry particularly interesting.” (Feng et al.,
2015, 328)
Due to complexity of the data collection process and problems that the research in Russia
faces when it is needed to implement an empirical study, the focus of this particular paper would
be more general. The author acknowledges that it is hard to do an empirical study in 3PL market,
due to its complexity. Moreover, when gathering data researchers face obstacle related to low
response rates. As Maloni and Carter (2006), Kiso et al. (2009), stated most of the research has
been made specifically for USA. Since 2006, there has been a number of studies focusing on
Asian countries, however almost nothing related to air cargo transportation in Russia. Therefore,
the objective of this master thesis is to bridge this gap, by making a more general market study,
using different methods of data collection.
28
Chapter 2. Research design and methodology
The research and study methodology are crucial for the master thesis in terms structure and
correct approach to data collection and analysis. The aim of the study is to analyze current
problems and trends in air cargo transportation in Russia, identify industry-specific challenges
and compare the results with theoretical framework, secondary data and global practices in air
freight management. To achieve this goal, firstly, based on secondary data there will be an
overview of Russian airfreight market structure, main players, volumes and changes for the last
five years. In order to answer research questions, after that, there will be a survey amongst air
carriers and freight forwarders in order to identify key challenges and trends.
The survey will contain online questionnaire and two structured interviews. The interviews
with freight-forwarding companies is necessary to get a more in-depth understanding of the
issue.
In the end, there will be a discussion of the results based on comparing them with
scientific articles mentioned in the literature review, and with modern practices and trends in the
industry. In this chapter, these approaches and stage of empirical study and the mater thesis itself
are discussed in more detail, first is secondary data analysis and then primary data collection and
analysis.
Secondary data analysis
The research method consists of how the researcher collects, analyzes, and interprets the
data in the study. Secondary analysis is a systematic method with procedural and evaluative
steps, yet there is a lack of literature to define a specific process. (Creswell, 2009). Innovations
in IT have allowed accessing, collecting and storing huge amounts of data and increased its
29
accessibility for research purposes. (Johnston, 2014) In any research, the time when the data is
collected must be considered, so the period of data collection is paramount (Boslaugh, 2007).
Therefore, only reports and material for the last 3 years will be used in order to get an up-to-date
structure of the market.
In order to create an overview of the market structure, in the beginning of the next chapter, it
is important to use reports, market analytics and statistical materials that are available online.
With much regret, obtaining new data or implementing a more in-depth market analysis is
impossible due to various circumstances, such as absence of access to data. Therefore, for
triangulation purposes secondary data will be used, not primary. The goal of using secondary
data, both theoretical that has been discussed in the previous chapter and practical is to widen the
possibility of comparing the results of the study with different sources and more importantly, use
it for creating the structure of the survey questionnaire.
Primary data
In terms of primary data further will be discussed a survey amongst air carriers and freight
forwarders in order to identify key challenges and trends. The survey will contain online
questionnaire and two structured interviews. The interviews with freight-forwarding companies
is necessary to get a more in-depth understanding of the issue.
Data collection and questionnaire design
The first stage of the data collection is a survey questionnaire.
The survey strategy is
usually associated with the deductive approach. It is a usual and logical strategy in business and
management research and is quite often used to identify various questions both quantitative and
qualitative. Therefore, it is usually used for exploratory and descriptive research. In general, this
study could be considered as descriptive, so this particular method fits perfectly. Surveys enable
the researcher to collect of big amounts of data from a sizeable population in a most time and
cost efficient way. Survey strategy is often implemented by using a questionnaire that is applied
to a sample. It allows standardization of the obtained data and provides a lot of room and
easiness to future analysis comparison. Moreover, the survey strategy is viewed as trustworthy
by the public in general and is both relatively easy to analyze and to understand. (Franklin &
Walker, 2014)
30
The survey strategy allows collecting quantitative data, which can be used in analyzing
quantitatively using descriptive and inferential statistics. In addition, the data collected using a
survey strategy can be used to suggest possible reasons for particular relationships between
variables and to produce models of these relationships. Using a survey strategy gives more
control over the research process and, when sampling is used, it is possible to generate findings
that are representative of the whole population at a lower cost than collecting the data for the
whole population. It is time consuming to ensure that the sample is representative, designing and
piloting the data collection instrument and trying to ensure a good response rate. (Franklin &
Walker, 2014)
Many researchers complain that their progress is delayed by their dependence on others for
information. The data collected by the survey strategy is unlikely to be as wide-ranging as those
collected by other research strategies. For example, there is a limit to the number of questions
that any questionnaire can contain if the goodwill of the respondent is not to be presumed on too
much. The questionnaire, however, is not the only data collection technique that belongs to the
survey strategy. Structured observation, of the type most frequently associated with organization
and methods (O&M) research, and structured interviews, where standardized questions are asked
of all interviewees often fall into this strategy. (Saunders, 2009) Therefore, for this study on-line
questionnaire and structured interview will be used for data collection.
The questionnaire design process started with the formulation of survey objectives and
information requirements and continued with the following steps: - consult with data users and
respondents; - review previous questionnaires; - draft the questionnaire; - review and revise
questionnaire; - test and revise questionnaire; - finalize questionnaire. (Franklin & Walker, 2014)
Responding to a question is a complex process. Respondents must first understand the
question. They must then search their memories or records to retrieve the requested information.
After retrieving the information, they must think about the correct answer to the question and
how much of that answer they are willing to reveal. Only then do they communicate an answer
to the question. Each of these processes may be a source of error. (Saunders, 2009)
In this particular questionnaire there were used three types of questions: closed, open and
two-choice. Closed questions are questions with multiple choice in general and have provided
responses. Closed questions are usually answered by choosing one or more answers from
provided responses. The possible responses listed for a question are called response categories.
Closed or multiple choice questions with the possibility to choose more than one option are the
majority of the questions listed. (Franklin & Walker, 2014)
31
Open questions are those where response categories are not provided to the respondent. The
respondent provides an exact numerical figure or answers the question in his or her own words,
which is either written down, in the case of self-enumeration, or recorded verbatim by the
interviewer. Open questions should be followed by sufficient space to record the response.
(Franklin & Walker, 2014) In this questionnaire, only two of the questions were open, in order to
speed up the responding process.
The two-choice question is the simplest version of a closed question. Often it is a yes/no
question and is used to split the respondents into two distinct groups. (Franklin & Walker, 2014)
In this case, two-choice questions were only yes/no and related to the fact that respondents had to
agree or disagree with a particular statement.
The questionnaire was designed based on secondary data in a form of a Microsoft word file
and tested on two companies. The results showed that it would have been more efficient to use
one of the online survey websites in order to increase the speed of the process and create a
smoother and easier results analysis. In addition, the number of questions had been reduced from
15 to 10 because according to feedback companies do not want to spend more than 7-10 minutes
answering the questionnaire.
The structure of the questionnaire is as follows:
1) What kind of goods are usually transported by air? (open question)
2) What are the main challenges of air cargo transportation market in Russia? (multiple
choice, more than one answer possible)
Low level of personnel qualification
High price of shipment to long distances
Cargo flow imbalance ( overloading of Moscow port)
Increased fees at airports
High cost of ground handling
Overall economic conditions ( sanctions, exchange rates etc)
Out-of-date aircraft fleet
Decrease in number of airports
Customs regulations
Other (please specify)
3) What is the main strategy of balancing costs versus value and cost versus benefits for air
carriers and forwarders? (open question)
4) The growth rates of air cargo transportation are decreasing. Is this tendency temporary?
(multiple choice, more than one answer possible)
32
No. Airfreight is losing the competition to other modes.
Yes, but the reason is hard to identify
Yes. Growth rates are decreasing because of economic crisis
Hard to answer
5) What are the main current tendencies in the market? (multiple choice, more than one
answer possible)
Decrease in volumes of domestic shipment
A shift towards international transportation
Market is affected by the growth of online sales
The main goal for freight forwarder is to keep the position in the market
Other (please specify)
6) Do you agree with the following statement: “Due to contra-sanctions, the flow of goods
has significantly changed its direction and perishable goods, which used to be transported
from Europe by car, are now transported by air “. (Two-choice)
Yes
No
7) What in your opinion characterizes the multimodal opportunities of Russian
transportation system? (multiple choice, more than one answer possible)
Price and cost competition with other modes of transportation do not allow the
necessary volumes of air cargo for airport infrastructure to develop
Lack of logistics operators that are capable to organize cargo transportation with
minimal price using multimodalism
The lack of airport locations (especially in small towns)
Other (please specify)
8) To what degree in your opinion the Air Feeder Service in Russia is developed. (multiple
choice, only one answer possible)
Well developed
Almost not developed
Not developed. The flight and delivery are separated.
Other (please specify)
9) Do you think it is necessary to introduce international standard e-freight and paperless
invoicing of transit cargo? (two-choice)
Yes
No
10) What do you think it is necessary to do in order to increase the attractiveness of air cargo
transportation market in Russia? multiple choice, more than one answer possible
33
To increase the number of spaces for aircrafts inside airports
To increase airports’ conditions
To increase personnel qualification level
To optimize the cost of service
To develop the network of hub-airports and correlation of rail- and air
transport
Other (please specify)
In the first phase, a database containing information about Russian 3PLs was used. The
selection process included companies offering differing ranges of services and more importantly
using different modes of cargo transportation. This information was obtained through a number
of secondary sources such as company websites, company reports, and articles in industry
magazines. Including companies of differing size. The size of 3PL companies may have an
impact on their opportunities to diversify the modes of cargo transportation. Finally, list of 124
companies was selected as output of this phase. In the second phase, an email and (or) enquiry
was conducted to secure the acceptance of companies to participate in the questionnaire and to
check both the breadth of service provided and the overall approach to decision-making.
The second stage of data collection is cased-based structured interview. Robson (2002)
defines case-based study as ‘a method of collecting data which includes an empirical analysis of
a specific modern issue in its day-to-day environment using multiple sources of evidence’. Yin
(2003) also mentions the importance of the environment. The debatable thing here is where are
the borders of the modern issue itself and the environment in which it is operating on a daily
basis. In this master thesis, the author uses more of a survey-based approach then a case study. It
is important to highlight the difference between them. Although, the research is implemented
within the environment the possibilities of exploration and understanding are more limited.
A single case is often used when it is important to highlight an outstanding issue or a very
important one on the context of the research. The objective for having several cases refers to the
situation when there is a need to identify whether the results of the first case are the same as
others and there is a possibility to generalize the findings. For this reason Yin (2003) argues that
multiple case studies are quite often more applicable the single case studies, because when you
decide to use a single case study, you will have to justify your choice more strongly. Moreover, a
well-implemented case study can allow the researcher to question an existing theory and provide
a basis for future research studies. (Yin, 2003)
The terms quantitative and qualitative are used widely in business and management research
to differentiate both data collection techniques and data analysis procedures. In order to
34
understand the difference between them it is worth mentioning that on refers to numeric and the
other to non-numeric data. Quantitative method most often is described as a form of data
collection and analysis that has numerical data as a result. On the other hand, qualitative is used
predominantly as a synonym for any data collection technique (such as an interview) or data
analysis procedure (such as categorizing data) that generates or use non-numerical data. (Yin,
2003)
However, it is worth noting that some authors, for example Tashakkori and Teddlie (2003),
use the more generic term research design when referring to multiple methods. When deciding
what research method to use, one can therefore either use a single data collection technique and
related analysis procedures (mono method) or use more than one data collection technique and
analysis procedures to answer your research question (multiple methods). Such practice is
becoming more and more popular amongst management and business studies, when the same
research may implement both quantitative and qualitative techniques and procedures in
combination as well as use primary and secondary data. (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003)
The information-oriented process suggested by Flyvbjerg (2001) has inspired the approach
used to select case companies. The author argued that in order to maximize the information
potential from small samples, cases need to be selected based on expectations of their
information content. This selection process has been organized into two phases: (i) choice of a
preliminary set of companies and (ii) phone enquiry to determine willing to participate in the
study. (Flyvbjerg, 2001)
The following definition of 3PL, adapted from the definition provided by Berglund et al.
1999, has been used in this study: “Third-party logistics are activities carried out by a logistics
service provider on behalf of a shipper and consisting of at least transportation. In addition, other
activities can be integrated into the service offering, for example: warehousing and inventory
management, information-related activities, such as tracking and tracing, and value added supply
chain activities, such as secondary assembly and installation of products” (Evangelista et al.,
2013, 978)
To answer the two research questions identified in the previous section, a qualitative
approach has been used based in the analysis.
A number of factors motivates the use of qualitative methodology in the context of this
research. First, as shown in the previous section, the vast majority of papers published in this
area have used quantitative methodologies, leaving the value of qualitative analyses largely
untested. Qualitative methods such as case-based questionnaire analysis can generate new
35
insights (Seuring, 2008). Second, the main purpose of this research is explanatory and theory
building in nature. Finally, the researcher argued that the survey method is an effective means of
collecting in-depth information.
The interview will be carried out mainly to gain insights into main issues of air carriers and
forwarders that were identified in the questionnaire. What seems to be the problem, how the
company does balances cost against value and cost against benefits. In general, interviews are
implemented in order to verify the results of the questionnaire and can be described as a tool of
post-hoc analysis.
A multiple method
approach was chosen for this research. One of the main benefits
associated to the use of multiple methods is that the comparison of two or more data sources
supports explorative investigations. The empirical analysis has been divided into the following
four steps: company selection, interview protocol, data collection, analysis and interpretation
Company selection
In the first phase, a request to the Career Center of Graduate School of Management, StPetersburg has been made. The goal was to find a company (companies) that are involved in air
cargo industry and willing to participate in the study. The Career Center has contacted Cargo
Terminal of Pulkovo International Airport in Saint Petersburg, which has agreed to assist with
organizing thee interview.
Finally, two companies were selected as output of this phase. Two
structured interviews were conducted at the company’s offices at the Cargo Terminal facilities.
The following paragraph will provide the interview protocol, the text of both interview could be
found in the Discussion section of Chapter 3.
Interview protocol
The interviews were conducted using a structured data collection guide that was designed
based on the literature review and the results of the survey. This interview tool included open
and multiple questions relating to the following:
1) general company information
2) modes competition
36
3) balancing cost against value
4) balancing cost against benefits
5) multimodality and technology
6) market trends
7) market challenges
Data collection
The data collection guide was sent to the respondents in advance to allow them to
familiarize themselves with the topic. The respondents were interviewed in face-to-face meetings
at the company’s office at the Pulkovo Cargo Terminal. It was agreed that company name would
remain anonymous to encourage openness of response. Such information has been integrated
with information obtained from other sources (e.g., company reports, article published on
industry magazines, logistics website and portals). In this way, information was triangulated
across data sources and thus improved the validity of the research.
Data analysis
The information were analyzed using an approach that involves comparing evidence and
observing differences and similarities. The information collected from interviews has been
recorded and transcribed. The analysis of interview transcripts followed the two approaches
suggested by Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, and Jackson (2012): content analysis and grounded
analysis. The former involves interrogating the data for constructs and ideas that have been
decided in advance. The latter involves letting the data “speak for itself” and letting it guide the
researcher towards an understanding of the data.
A combination of both approaches was adopted. The transcript analysis employed involved
four main stages (see Fig. 5):
37
Figure 5. The transcript analysis process
Source: Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, and Jackson (2012)
Stage 1 reflects the advice of Robson (2003) that good transcript analysis has to be aimed
squarely at answering the research questions asked or addressing the overall research objectives.
Stage 2 recognizes that repeated use of a particular word or phrase by a single respondent does
not necessarily imply that the concept in question has particular importance beyond the specific
environment in which that respondent is based. Stage 3 is essentially a two-stage process of
linguistic filtering. The final stage involves the analysis of data based on and contrasting the
main issues set out by respondents.
The final step was to compare the results of the survey with the results of the interview with
secondary data in order to have two levels of results and achieve triangulation (see Fig 6).
38
Figure 6. Data collection and validation.
Source: created by author
In next chapter, a full data analysis will be provided and discussed. The conclusions that can
be derived from the findings will also be described subsequently. In addition, there will be an
analysis of key themes and patterns in the data in order to identify crucial findings and to
develop propositions and suggestions.
Chapter 3. Efficiency factors of air cargo transportation in Russia
3.1 Findings
Market structure
According to International Air Transport Association (IATA), the growth of international
airfreight shipment in 2013 in comparison with 2012 was 3.6 %. Such positive dynamics were
attributed to the development of Middle Eastern and European regions. In terms of Russian
market, the situation was more pessimistic. The growth in 2013 in comparison with 2012 was
only 1.6 %. The main players on the market had the following situation: AirBridgeCargo showed
17, 5 % growth rate, Aeroflot had 6, 8 % decrease in comparison with 2012. Such decline of
Aeroflot could be explained by decision of company to temporarily stop using freight aircrafts.
Top-5 air cargo companies in terms of freight turnover in 2013 are presented in Table 1 below. It
39
is important to say that top-5 carriers account for 88, 2 % of all air cargo in Russia. Market share
of Russia in the world’s air cargo transportation in 2013 was 2 %. 80% of Aeroflot volumes is
general cargo, 10% perishable goods, animals, pharmaceuticals etc., and 10 %- post deliveries.
S7 is mainly transporting fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), pharmaceuticals, foods, post
deliveries and electronics. Sheremetyevo Cargo has a precise division of all goods transported
internally by types: FMCG (32%), equipment (14%), clothes (12%), food (11%), and post (8%).
(Russian Direct Investment Fund, 2013)
Table 1. Top-5 air cargo companies 2013
Company
AirBridgeCargo
Aeroflot
Transaero
Volga-Dnepr
S7
Freight turnover, tkm
2976
1093
407
304
85
Source: Russian Direct Investment Fund, 2013
In January-October 2015, according to Rosaviation report, Russian airlines transported
around 870 000 tons, which is 3 % than in 2014. Absolute leader of the market AirBridgeCargo
(Volga-Dnepr Group) held 58% of the freight and was the only air carrier that showed growth,
however most of the cargo flow was transitional. AirBridgeCargo is a unique project for Russia,
one of the biggest cargo airlines in the world and the majority of its cargo only gets to Russia
during intermediate landing and is in no way related to Russian economy. The market share of
the second carrier in international transit is 26 % in 2015 and 21%. Volumes of cargo shipments
for the 10 months decreased by 14, 5% to 208 691 tons, international shipments (without
transitional) remained at the same level. Market structure for 2015 is represented on Figure7
below. The reason for this in 2015 were increased exchange rate, decline of import, decrease in
industrial production and drop in market volumes. Cargo transportation in general reflects the
state of events of the economy and in general is affected by a number of macroeconomic factors.
(FAVT, 2015)
40
Figure 7. Top 10 air cargo carriers
Source: FAVT, 2015
The basis of the business of international airlines is still the domestic market, which
accounts for more than a half of all cargo volumes and creates unique competitive advantages for
an international air carrier. Russian airlines cannot really depend on the domestic market because
it is highly imbalanced. The majority of cargo airlines face this problem when opening new flight
destinations. For example, in Norilsk for every 15 tons of inbound cargo there is only ½ ton of
outbound cargo, so exclusively on-sided cargo flow. The map of major Russian airports with
percentage of processed of total cargo flow is on Figure 8.
41
Figure 8. Cargo flow distribution in Russia
Source: Russian Direct Investment Fund, 2013
Questionnaire
The questionnaire was sent to 124 companies by e-mail and there are 31 responses
recorded. The response rate is 25 %. The names of the companies that participated in filling in
the questionnaire will not be mentioned due to confidentiality reasons, and are unknown to the
author of the paper, because the survey was anonymous. Some of the questions had to be deleted
from the results due to insufficient number of responses. For example, two open questions did
not get enough responses, so it was decided to address them in structured interviews. The rest of
the responses are shown below. Firstly, the most important questions on current challenges and
trends are shown on Table 2 and 3.
Table 2. Challenges of air cargo transportation in Russia
Response options
%
Absolute
number
High cost of ground handling
Overall economic conditions
Increased fees at airports
Cargo flow imbalance
80,65%
80,65%
64,52%
48,39%
25
25
20
15
42
Customs regulations
High price of shipment to long distances
Decrease in number of airports
Low level of personnel qualification
Out-of-date aircraft fleet
29,03%
25,81%
25,81%
16,13%
9,68%
9
8
8
5
3
Table 3. Trends of the market
Response options
%
Absolute
number
The main goal for freight carriers is to keep the
position in the market
Decrease in volumes of domestic shipments
Market is affected by the growth of online sales
A shift towards international transportation
Increasing security measures
93,55%
29
70,97%
29,03%
19,35%
19,35%
22
9
6
6
Players in air cargo transportation market in Russia consider high cost of ground handling,
overall economic conditions and increased fees at airport as main challenges that they face when
operating in the market. It is very important to highlight that at the same time level of personnel
qualification, customs regulatory system and high price of shipment to long distance ae not
viewed as a constraint to their business. At the same time, the main trends of the market
according to results of the survey are to keep the position in the market and an overall decrease
in volumes in shipments. The second trend is obvious and is backed by secondary data. The
participants of the survey do not consider an increase of online sales as a driver of the market,
but it seems be one to the author of the paper. The reasons for this discrepancy will be mentioned
in the discussion section.
The topic of intermodality has also been addressed in the questionnaire and the responses
are shown on Table 4. Respondents do not view lack of logistics operators with multimodal
capabilities as a constraint to multimodalism in Russia, the infrastructural problems are much
more important. To support that idea, operators consider price, cost competition with other
modes preventing factors for infrastructural development, and increase in volumes. In addition,
there is a lack of regional airports. Talking about Air Feeder Service in Russia, almost 75% of
respondents view it as almost not developed (see Fig. 9).
Table 4. Multimodal opportunities of Russian transportation system
Response options
%
Absolute
number
Price and cost competition with other modes of
transportation does not allow the necessary
volumes of air cargo for airport infrastructure to
96,77%
30
43
develop
The lack of airport location (especially in small
towns)
Lack of logistics operators that are capable to
organize cargo transportation with minimal price
using multimodalism
61,29%
19
38,71%
12
Figure 9. Air Feeder Service in Russia
Participants of the survey were also asked about the importance of introducing the e-cargo
standard in Russia. The vast majority of respondents thinks it is necessary to do it (see Fig. 10)
Figure 10. Importance of introducing e-cargo standard
The question related to ways of improvement and potential development has received the
following responses (see Table 5). Freight forwarders and carriers mainly support the idea that
improvement can be reached by optimizing the cost of service. This idea is almost the same as
the one in Table 3 that companies only worry about cost-cutting opportunities. Improving the
conditions of the airport is also viewed as a potential for the market, however these improvement
again are not connected with increasing the number of aircraft parking spaces and runways,
developing the network of hub-airports and correlation of rail- and air transport, increasing the
44
level of personnel qualification. Just using the results of the questionnaire it is hard to make a
conclusion of what do respondents mean by improving the conditions of the airport, therefore
that question was addressed during the interviews.
Table 5. Potential for development
Response options
%
Absolute
number
optimize the cost of service
93,55%
29
increase airports’ conditions
increase personnel qualification level
develop the network of hub-airports and correlation
of rail- and air transport
increase the number of aircraft parking spaces and
runways
stop all the operations with foreign carriers
61,29%
32,26%
19,35%
19
10
6
6,45%
2
6,45%
2
Apart from ways for improvement, companies were asked to forecast the future of the
market and the responses are represented on Figure 11 below. More than a half think that
volumes are decreasing because of the economic crisis and this tendency is temporary, however a
third thinks that airfreight has completely lost the competition to other modes of transportation
Figure 11. Volumes decrease tendency
Interview results
Interview 1.
45
The interview was conducted with a representative of a logistics and shipment company at
the Pulkovo Cargo Terminal Office. The representative was a manager of that particular office.
For confidentiality reasons is it going to be referred to as Company A.
The company’s head
office is located in Saint Petersburg. The interview lasted about 45 minutes and included
questions that were described in Chapter 2. The interviewee was to elaborate on the questions
asked in the questionnaire with a goal of verifying the results of the survey. Here is the transcript
that has been recorded in the written form by the author of the master thesis:
The competition between different modes is sometimes “nominal”. It mostly depends on
type of the product and on the urgency of the delivery. If we disregard these conditions, in
general in winter it is cheaper to deliver the goods by road for up to 2000 km and in summer for
up to 3500 km.
It is hard for airlines to compete with other modes in terms of volumes.
Currently there is a trend of volumes decrease. In addition, the air cargo market in Russia is
highly dependent on passenger market. Most airlines that ship cargo as well prioritize the
passengers because they provide much more revenue. Airlines determine the number of flights
and destinations and are not “client-oriented” in that sense. A good example here is that in
Pulkovo there is only one flight to Yakutsk a week, so logistics companies and agents are forced
to adjust accordingly.
The main methods for balancing the costs and benefits are the following:
to provide discounts for increase/decrease of the delivery time;
widening the network of destinations ( airports lower the land handling cost for
new destinations;
Switching to other cargo terminals
Reducing the number of staff to minimum
For airlines : increasing the tariffs when using wide body crafts and economies of
scale
Reduction the rates of flight service
For 3PLs right now, the main method of balancing cost and value is diversification of their
services and entering the market of additional services (i.e. door-to-door). In that sense
multimodalism is a growing trend for 3PLs, especially international companies (like DHL, Pony
Express) have good market capabilities. Air Feeder Service as it is in other countries does not
exist in Russia. Although, there is a demand for it. It is not profitable for terminals to have their
own car fleet, so in most cases the air transportation and delivery are separated. It is more
beneficial in terms of cost for clients to organize the delivery themselves. In most cases,
passenger aircrafts are used for cargo transportation. The terms are that one pallet cannot exceed
4 tons; therefore, for cargo higher in volume wide body crafts are necessary. However, in
46
Pullover Cargo Terminal only Emirates airlines possesses such aircrafts. In Moscow Aeroflot
uses them as well. The introduction of e-freight standard and paperless transit goods invoices is
good as a concepts but the representative of Company A does not consider this to happen any
time soon and, moreover, it is highly unlikely.
The decrease of oil prices does not help to cut costs for logistics companies. The airline (air
carrier) determines the tariff that includes fuel charge. Fuel charge almost does not affect the
market. The airline sets the tariff due to market demand and capabilities. It changes very often
with high volatility and fluctuations. Imbalance of cargo flows. The reason is that Moscow is a
hub and has different level of intensity of flights and economies of scale, therefore quite often
has lower prices, then say Pulkovo. Company A also considers the main goal for logistic
companies is to keep the position in the market. The other trend is reduction of volumes. On
average since last year, the weight for one invoice has decreased by 25 %.
The Company A was asked to name the main challenges as well:
Imbalance of cargo flows. The reason is that Moscow is a hub and has different
level of intensity of flights and economies of scale, therefore quite often has lower
prices, then say Pulkovo.
Increase in airport fees
High cost of ground handling
Terminal handling
Overall economic conditions
Underdevelopment of regional airports. However, this factor has the minor
importance.
The main factor is that all air cargo operations are connected with Cargo
Terminals. Except for Moscow other destination have no competition and
terminal have a monopoly position and can sets prices at whatever levels, this
imposes additional challenges for forwarders and carries.
The overall potential of the market is hard to put into numbers. The market is mainly affected
by macroeconomic circumstances and therefore in the nearest future it is hard to anticipate
growth. It is extremely unattractive right now and almost all 3PLs that do use air transportation
diversify their operations and provide a much wider range of services. Airlines to do not consider
cargo as a main source of revenue and attend to passengers much more, leaving cargo as a “side”
business.
Interview 2.
47
The interview was conducted with a representative of a freight forwarding company at the
Pulkovo Cargo Terminal Office. The representative was a manager of that particular office. For
confidentiality reasons is it going to be referred to as Company B. The company’s head office is
located in Moscow. The interview lasted about 20 minutes and included questions that were
described in Chapter 2. The interviewee was to elaborate on the questions asked in the
questionnaire with a goal of verifying the results of the survey. Here is the transcript that has
been recorded in the written form by the author of the master thesis:
It is difficult to say there is mode competition; all else being equal air transportation is losing
to other modes. Moreover, delivery times play a crucial role in this, choosing the mode depends
on urgency and the value of the cargo. Company B also acknowledges high dependency of air
cargo transportation on passenger route network and airlines consider passenger transportation as
a main source of revenue.
It is hard for airlines to compete with other modes in terms of
volumes.
Since it is a monopolized market, many small and medium companies have no other choice
but to diversify and apply cost-cutting technics in order to keep their position at the market. Such
as, opening new destinations, cutting cost in terms of personnel and others. Companies have to
diversify and provide discounts. Some of the freight forwarders switch to tourism and even start
to sell tickets, because they are “short” money and are very liquid.
Almost all regional airports require a lot of investments for recovering and building the
cargo handling infrastructure, for purchasing modern equipment and technologies. It is quite
often, that airports do not have cargo terminals at all, and are forced to refuse the customer in
cargo service because they do not have loading/unloading equipment, transportation tools
(forklifts) and as a result no appropriate personnel. The e-freight standard is viewed as necessary
but again impossible.
In 2015 Transaero remained the third air carrier in the country and all its cargo flows are
going to be grabbed by Aeroflot. Transaero was damping and had much lower tariffs, now the
situation is going to change. Therefore, Aeroflot is abusing its power by “ruining” Transaero.
Company has also identified high cost of ground handling, terminal handling and overall
economic situation as main challenges. Company B does not expect many changes in the nearest
future and considered attractiveness of the market as low, the market is mainly affected by
economic trends. Again, it is possible to say that for airlines passengers are far more important
than cargo, which does not get a proper amount of attention.
48
3.2 Discussion
The main challenges of the 3PL companies in air cargo transportation market in Russia are
high cost of ground handling, overall economic conditions, increased fees at airports, cost of
terminal handling, monopolized market and underdevelopment of regional airports
infrastructure. The results of the questionnaire survey are more or less the same, except interview
companies also indicated terminal operations and monopolized market.
The relation between air cargo demand and economic activity has been very well
documented in the literature (Kasarda & Sullivan, 2006; Chang and Chang, 2009) indicating that
air cargo volume and GDP per capita are mutually interdependent and causal. The flow of
airfreight in any country depends on the economic relations with other countries, more
specifically export and import, the cost of transportation and rates of exchange. In this case, it is
worth mentioning that airfreight transportation is a driving force of trade between economies,
predominantly countries that are far away from each other. Exchange rates have played a crucial
role in Russian market and have certainly affected the overall performance and cargo volumes.
A study by de Lima et al. (2007) in Brazil has shown that the most relevant aspects found in
their survey are related to price and cost reduction, but with a certain focus on the need for
planning by airlines and by airport administrators in order to create better operating conditions.
Air cargo agents stated their difficulties in dealing with Brazilian airlines because of the lack of
infrastructure. This results in an unbalanced game between national and international agents.
National and international airlines complain about the lack of airport infrastructure and about the
air traffic control, unable to handle their operations in a more rapid and efficient way, thus
resulting in higher costs.
Therefore, the results of this study show similar results, high cost of ground handling,
increased fees at airports and cost of terminal handling are all related to infrastructural problems.
The main trend of the market according to results of the survey is to keep the position in the
market, so again price and cost reduction is viewed as the factor of primary importance. The cost
reduction strategy involves opening new destinations, because airport lower the land handling
costs for new destinations. However, this only relates to airlines not to freight forwarders.
Airlines can use economies of scale when using wide body aircrafts by increasing tariffs or
switch to other cargo terminals. The last thing is possible for Moscow Aviation Unit (MAU). For
forwarders the strategy is to reduce the number of staff to minimum, which not a very surprising
way and is not industry-specific at all. Some companies postpone the projects or extend them in
49
time because of the world economy, sanctions against Russia and the contra-sanctions,
devaluation of ruble and drop of oil prices, capital outflow and decrease of investment activity
It is very important to highlight that at the same time level of personnel qualification,
customs regulatory system and high price of shipment to long distance are not viewed as a
constraint to their business. The participants of the survey do not consider an increase of online
sales as a driver of the market, but it seems be one to the author of the paper. Perhaps,
respondents do not have the overall picture of the market and probably do not work closely with
online orders, so this discrepancy is understandable. In addition, the low level of personnel
qualification is not a challenge for companies in the market. A study by Moser et al. (2014) of
western companies, operating in Russia showed that all interviewees highlighted human
resources as a key resource for their operations in Russia. As a part of that problem, respondents
also mentioned lack of transparency and big employee turnover rates.
Another very interesting and surprising result is that customs regulatory system is not
considered as a challenge by participants of the survey and interviewed companies. However, in
literature (Fisenko, 2011) and many other materials on the market custom is viewed as a major
constraint for effective logistics in Russia. Not transparent system of customs regulations
prevents air cargo transport from exploiting its main competitive advantage – speed. The price
goes up as well, and the client is forced to search for alternative modes of delivery, often at the
expense of preserving the quality of goods. Of course, there are some minor attempts to solve
this issue; however no practical results can be noticed so far. For example, creation of Customs
Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan did not result in any improvement.
It is hard to give a clear explanation on what are the reasons for such result. The author of the
paper attributes two above mentioned discrepancies personnel qualification level and customs
regulations, to lack of interest of freight forwarders and airlines to develop and improve. As it
became clear during market analysis, Russian air cargo industry is monopolized, so companies
do not have the incentives to develop and do not see any other improvement measures except for
cost-cutting strategy.
The problem of monopolism is indeed a very important one. The segment of oversized cargo
is dominated by AirBridgeCargo and sized cargo by Aeroflot. In 2015 Transaero remained the
third air carrier in the country and all its cargo flows are going to be grabbed by Aeroflot.
Transaero was damping and had much lower tariffs, now the situation is going to change.
According to S7, passenger airlines that carry cargo in the luggage compartments and cargo
carriers are not competitors. Volga Dnepr has developed a route network according to
50
effectiveness of cargo flows, they carry oversized cargo. Passenger airlines form their route
network according to passenger flows and cargo is just for filling the empty space. Aeroflot is, on
the contrary, views cargo carriers as competitors, because cargo airlines have lower frequency of
flights and are less effective in delivering special types of cargo (perishable, urgent and with very
high quality).
According to Daft & Albers, 2013 and Lohmann & Koo, 2013 it is important to look at the
business model and value proposition of the carrier. Cargo airlines are losing to Aeroflot mainly
because of less expanded route network, service quality (frequency and timetable convenience)
and opportunities to ship cargo of special requirements. Volga-Dnepr is mainly focusing on
charter flights of oversized freight – it is the segment where passenger airlines are not
represented, such specialization is based on relatively low utilization of its capacities (around
46%, market average 67), often aircraft is moved to a cargo-uploading place without commercial
load. AirBridgeCargo thus is partially a competitor for passenger airlines, because they also ship
batches of freight that do not require special delivery conditions (FMCG, cosmetics, equipment
etc.)
AirBridgeCargo is the only big company in Russian Federation that regularly offers cargo
transportation. Its growth can be explained by extensive and expanding the network and
development of business in major international markets – North America, Europe and China. In
general, import of air cargo in Russia is expected to decline or remain at the level of 2015; the
same trend is anticipated for internal airfreight. Russian air carriers are not expected to show any
positive trends and there is no ground for growth. A part of the costs of AirBridgeCargo is
formed in the ruble zone, for example part of salaries and taxes, therefore devaluation of ruble is
helps the company to be more competitive in international market.
There is no competition in the market, which is the main problem of the industry. Attracting
multimodal operators, foreign companies and creating competition amongst airports could
double current cargo flow. For example, Emirates are already using Domodedovo as transit hub
on the route Dubai-Moscow-Frankfurt-Dubai. Development of air cargo transportation is
connected to overall economic recovery and increase of demand for retail goods. In the long
term, it might be possible to change global trade routes and to use Russian airport infrastructure
for cargo warehousing, for example on the route Asia-Europe. Increase the number of parking
spaces for aircrafts the number and quality of runways seem to be not helpful measures probably
because the market is not used to its full capacity and such measures can only help in a saturated
market or to attract international carriers.
51
The topic of intermodality has also been addressed in the questionnaire and two interviews.
Respondents do not view lack of logistics operators with multimodal capabilities as a constraint
to multimodalism in Russia, the infrastructural problems are much more important. To support
that idea, operators consider price, cost competition with other modes preventing factors for
infrastructural development, and increase in volumes. In addition, there is a lack of regional
airports. Therefore, again infrastructural problems remain as the major ones.
Multimodality should be one of the main directions of governmental programs in terms of
development of air cargo transportation segment. It is necessary to create multimodal cargo
terminals with modern management technologies.
Cargo aviation facilitates industrial and
economic growth of the country by ensuring fast cargo delivery to remote destinations. Thus, the
government of Russia should pay attention to development of cargo transportation. Today there
is a problem of multimodalism and a vicious circle has appeared: pricing strategy of regional
airports is not flexible, at the same time price competition with other modes of transportation
does not allow to form cargo volumes sufficient for infrastructure development.
Many topics of transportation forums were related to the key trend of cargo transportation,
which is development of multimodal cargo hubs. It is a logical idea because decrease of logistics
costs is a key factor of investment attractiveness. The world experience shows that in order to
succeed in building cargo hubs there must be the following three stages: governmental support,
innovation (including IT), effective airport management. Synergy of those three aspects gives the
basis to attracting investment into the industry. Undeveloped logistics and country territory size
are the main reasons for excessive prices on imported goods and transport services. The share of
logistical costs in Russia’s GDP is 19%, which is twice as high as in USA or Germany. In the
result, logistical cost are on average 28% of the price of the product, whereas in developed
countries it is not more than 10%. Modern logistics that assumes the delivery of the cargo from
the primary sender to the end receiver is built on multimodal schemes and logistics operator is
responsible for delivery time, cost, cargo security and documentation. It is necessary to make a
transition to a totally new level of industry development, and according to some opinions, Russia
has the potential to do it. Firstly, it is the geographical location of the country as a basis for
development of transitional cargo flows.
Currently there is a rather high demand for transit cargo flows but Russia is not fully
competitive yet in this field because it cannot provide foreign clients with convenient and fast
service. Mainly due to undeveloped ground infrastructure of airports and a series of unsolved
issues relate to regulatory support of cargo transportation. The main competitors of Russian
airports are rapidly developing airports of the Middle East, India and Central Asia. (Valdes,
52
2015) In addition to chain of hub-airports. They are needed first and foremost in Khabarovsk,
Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok in order to shift the imbalance of cargo flows from
Moscow.
As a good example of how to increase the cargo flow, it is possible to mention the Dubai
airport. In 4 years, they almost doubled its cargo flow due to special policies of the government,
business support and significant investments in development of airport infrastructure. They also
created free economic zones, introduced modern technologies and started using intermodal
logistics with different modes of transport. Not that many years ago, this was the case
particularly with Dubai Airport in the United Arab Emirates that use its competitive advantage,
which is geographic position, placed halfway between Europe and Asia, and airport free trade
zone to attract companies looking to invest in the Emirates. Nowadays, Dubai Airport is the
largest air cargo center in the Middle East and one of the largest re-export hubs in the world.
(Yamaguchi, 2008)
Because of the contra-sanctions, cargo flows significantly changed and manty types of
perishable goods that have previously been transported by car are not shipped by air. However,
not all types of cargo can be transported by air (i.e. coal). The situation on the market could
deteriorate in the recent future, because warehouses in airports are half-empty. Despite the fact
that in some cases in became more profitable to use airplanes, it is only applicable to the part of
the companies with rapid financial turnover. Therefore, it is less sensitive to exchange rate
volatility. For example, during delivery time of sea transportation, which is around 30-50 days,
exchange rate can change by 15-20%.
In March 2013, IATA approved Multilateral e-AWB Agreement, that allows airlines and
freight forwarders use the common electronic invoice. It is not mandatory to use such system but
it is risky not to, because clients will not view them as competitive in a new business
environment and companies can just be forced out of the market. IATA highlights the fact that eCargo will provide benefits not only for airlines but the entire supply chain.
Russia still is not on the top of the list in terms of air cargo transportation volumes;
therefore, introduction of electronic cargo technology (e-cargo) is a way to go. It is worth
mentioning that introduction of paperless documents and IATA e-freight standard in 2014 was a
priority for Ministry of Transportation of Russian Federation but this study has not found any
results of its implementation. The e-cargo system also includes air cargo invoice (e-AWB),
domestic cargo invoice (HAWB) and security system (e-CSD). Domestic cargo invoice is for
multimodal consolidated shipments air-car.
The vast majority of respondent think that it is
53
necessary to introduce e-cargo standard in Russia, but according to interviews, this is very
unlikely to happen in the nearest future. However, the economic benefits from introducing ecargo are represented below on Table 6.
Table 6. Economic benefits from introducing e-freight
Sender
3PL
Terminal
agent
Airline
Document
processing,
time
reduction,
%
38
51
50
30
Document
processing,
cost
reduction,
%
38
38
27
29
Source: Miksa, 2013.
Potentially it might be possible to develop transitional points, in which air and railroad are
connected, and may be even river- and seaports. Such system of cargo delivery (port-stationairport) can significantly decrease the cost of logistics and provide shorter lead times. Those
systems are already used in big international airports: Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong.
According to Sheremetyevo cargo, the percentage of domestic freight increased from 30 to 38 %
and therefore the share of international freight declined.
Aeroflot in 2016 is planning to
significantly increase volumes, mainly because of subsidiaries, upcoming football World
Championship of 2018, the leave of Transaero and governmental programs of region
development, including Crimea.
Decrease of domestic air cargo transportation will continue or even strengthen if there will
not be any stabilizing measures. The growth of international cargo shipments depends on
54
transitional flights of Russian airlines, does not depend on cargo volumes of Russian economy,
and therefore is an indirect indicator of industry development.
3.3 Contribution, limitations and future research
This master thesis has identified key challenges that air cargo carriers face in Russia and
trends of market in the context of current economic circumstances. Mainly the challenges are
related to overall economic condition and its affects. It is possible to say that according to the
results of the study the major problem is related to infrastructure. In that sense, practical
contribution of the paper is to shift the focus from analyzing the issues of 3PL in Russia to
analyzing the possibilities and opportunities for infrastructure development.
The study’s findings contribute to a better understanding about the key features of air cargo
transportation market in Russia as an emerging market. The introduced framework allows for a
systematic analysis of interrelations between institutions and firms’ resources – its structured
approach is particularly promising for further examinations in transition economies and
emerging markets at large (e.g. cross country/industry analyses). The study’s results offer
insights for air carriers in Russia in general and for 3PLs and other primarily business–to–
business driven service industries in particular. Yet, a generalization of the proposed
interrelations between institutions and firms’ resources is hardly defensible – especially when
accounting for distinct industries and their differing institutional environments. Thus, it remains
to be explored whether the findings are industry– or Russia–specific or might represent patterns
to be found in other transition economies or emerging markets in general.
This master thesis raises a question whether passenger route network has an impact on air
cargo transportation routes. Passenger operations seem to be important for Russian air carriers
and worldwide (Gardiner and Ison, 2008) but “not a significant factor in the airport choice for
scheduled freighter operations in Europe” (Kupfer et al., 2016, 65). There is an opportunity for
future research to prove or disprove this dependency. In addition, the level of personnel is
important for western companies operating in Russia but not for Russian air carriers. The most
important constraint of logistics in Russia according to Fisenko (2011) is the problem of customs
regulations. The results of this study suggest that Russian air cargo carriers do not view customs
regulations as a challenge to their business. Future research might focus on these discrepancies,
observational and empirical studies often provide different results. Author of this paper attributes
these results to the limitations of the survey and to monopolized market that does not establish
any incentives for companies to invest in their personnel.
55
Future research can also focus on cross-regional studies of companies in emerging markets
in in order to generalize the results within the scope of the world’s air cargo industry. As a part of
potential cost reduction schemes it might be interesting to research of supply chain integration in
air cargo industry in emerging markets and demand forecasting. However, in Russia it is hard to
justify a research on capacity management, which a very popular topic amongst researchers
worldwide, because the amount of volumes right now does not give such possibility.
Owing to work force and research possibilities, the questionnaire survey was conducted via
e-mail and the number of responses was relatively low. A large sample would ensure greater
validity of the findings in reflecting the actual situation. In addition, the interviewees’
background has to be noted: the inquiry for participating in the questionnaire has been sent to
companies’ e-mails and there was no requirement for a particular company position of the
participant.
56
Conclusion
This master thesis researched the area of air cargo transportation in Russia and identified
key factors that affect its efficiency. Understanding these factors is important in terms of
achieving the goal of making the Russian market a transit of cargo flow between Europe and
Asia. The industry has quite a few problems and economic crisis also has to be taken into
account, especially in terms of its impact on the industry and challenges that it has created.
Understanding the trends, where the whole industry is going is a crucial in terms of improving
the current state of events.
This study was focusing on one market, in particular, and has extended the scope of research
on air cargo transportation. Many of the previous studies in this area were focusing on one
particular territory or region, mainly the United States of America and there was a lack of
research specifically on Russian market. Due to complexity of the data collection process and
problems that the research in Russia faces when it is needed to implement an empirical study, the
focus of this particular paper was more general.
According to the results of the study, the companies in the market attribute the problems of
the industry to macroeconomic and infrastructural factors. In terms of infrastructure, price and
cost competition with other modes of transportation does not allow the necessary volumes of air
cargo for airport infrastructure to develop.
From the questionnaire and the interviews, it is possible to conclude that there is a lack of
understanding amongst companies how to improve the current conditions and efficiency. The
only solution that seems plausible to cargo forwarders is cost-cutting technics.
This master
thesis has also reviewed scientific literature on air cargo transportation and many of current
studies are related to demand forecasting, revenue and capacity allocation management. After
examining the structure of the Russian market, it is possible to conclude that these topics are less
relevant to Russia due to market specifics. In other words, the status of competition in the market
can be described as a form of monopoly, which deprives the companies, especially small- and
medium-sized of incentives to innovate and develop more cost-efficient schemes.
One of the surprising results of the empirical study is fact that customs regulatory system is
not considered as a challenge by participants of the survey and interviewed companies. However,
in literature and many other materials on the market custom is viewed as a major constraint for
effective logistics in Russia. It is hard to give a clear explanation on what are the reasons for
57
such result. It could be attributed to lack of interest of freight forwarders and airlines to develop
and improve in a monopolized market. In addition, they became used to this environment and
perhaps do not view it as a problem anymore.
As it was mentioned before, there are some opportunities for future research in this field.
This master thesis could potentially be used as a basis for cross-regional studies of companies. It
is important to generalize the results within the scope of the world’s air cargo industry and
implement different studies in emerging markets in order to identify similarities and patterns of
freight shipment structure of emerging markets. Although, some of the modern research topic are
hard to justify for Russian market due to its specifics.
58
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