Reducing cargo damage complaints through using packaging pallet method in WSA Line.doc

reducing cargo damage complaints through using packaging pallet method in wsa linesubmitted by zhang xiaoqinstudent id number w2006a5105c0011supervised by shangguan fengyua paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of bachelor of artsthe institute of online educationbeijing foreign studies university北京外国语大学网络教育学院学士学位论文诚信声明本人郑重声明： 所呈交的学士学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下，独立进行研究工作所取得的成果。论文所涉及的项目为本人亲自负责或者参与实施的项目。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成果。本人完全了解本声明的法律结果由本人承担。学士学位论文作者签名：张晓琴日期： 2011 年 12月 1日摘要关键词：拼箱；托盘；货损；我们公司一直是伟成国际船务wsa lines的忠实客户。伟成国际船务wsa lines 1983年成立于香港，总部设在加拿大温哥华。wsa lines在全球拥有50家海外分公司和100多家代理，合作伙伴更是遍布世界各个港口。深圳市伟成国际货运代理有限公司是wsa集团设在深圳的分支机构。深圳伟成1996年成立，主要从事货物的海运和空运服务，拼箱（lcl）和整柜（fcl）是公司的优势业务，同时提供仓储、报关、商检等一条龙的货运服务，在货运行业里享有较高的知名度和影响力,尤其在拼箱（lcl）方面是公司的优势业务，公司做的散货拼箱业务量巨大，散货拼箱要经过多次搬运，货物破损率也相对来说比较高一些。然而在与国内众多来自货物行业的激烈竞争中，2008年后遭遇到了业务量增长的瓶颈，致使销售增长率未能达到管理层的预期。自1996年伟成公司成立以来，一直有一些货损方面的投诉，致使公司的形象在客户心中有所滑落，新生代客户对公司的认可度不高。因此，伟成公司集多年少有改变的货物拼装已经成为公司成长的主要障碍之一。基于市场营销及业务推广方面的原理和实践，本论文提出假设，认为货物拼装的改进对销售有着重大意义，安全的托盘包装能带来额外的销量增长。本论文通过设计一个改进货物拼装的计划，来提升所拼装货物的安全性，以期在未来年度实现销售额较大幅度的增长，进而稳定并提升服务在国内外的市场份额并为扩大市场铺平道路。同时，本论文也试图通过该计划的设计、并从2008年6月至10实施、监控与评估的过程，研究探讨出一套仅以提升货物安全拼装来促进市场推广的方法。这个项目的调研结果综述以及项目的意义就是以最小的代价为公司赢得较高的声誉和利润。abstractour company is a loyal customer of wsa line at all. wsal line was established in hk in 1983 and the headquarter of wsa line is located in vancouver, canada. it has 50 branches company in oversea and more than 100 agents in the world. partners in various ports are aroud the world. shenzhen weicheng sea& air logistics ltd is a branch in shezhen of wsa line. shenzhen wsa was found in 1996, it mainly takes up sea and air servcie, especially have advantages in less container load and full container load. at the same time, it provides warehousing and custom and inspection one-stop service. wsa enjoys a high visibility and influece in the freight industry. especially in less container load is an advantage business of wsa line. wsa lines has plenty of less container load business. the rates of damage are higher than ful container load correspondingly because it need move for several time. however, wsl line entered into sales bottle-neck comparing with domestic logistics industry after 2008, leading sales increasing rates havent reached anticipation of management. since 1996 wsa line established, all along with some complains at damage of goods, making companys visualize to slide in customers heart. recognization rates were not higher enough to neozoic customer. thereby, wsa line collected many years seldom changing assembly methods have become the main growing obstacle. base marketing and sales extending on theory and practice, the thesis refer hypothesis to think goods assemblys promotion have important meaning at sales and safe pallet packing can bring extra sales increasing. this essay designs a plan of improving the cargo assembling to promote the safety, expecting the sales growth in the next year. meanwhile, this essay tryies to figure out a way to improve the safety assembling and spread in the market, by designing, carrying from june to october in , inspecting and evaluating the plan. the result and the meaning of the object shows that wsa line achieved the more reputation and profits by low cost.key words: less than container load ; pallet ; cargo damagedtable of contentspages1. project introduction 12. project problem identification and analysis2 2.1 project problem2 2.2 problem analysis4 2.3 results of problem analysis53. project objective and hypothesis7 3.1 project objective7 3.2 project hypothesis74. project rationale7 4.1 74.1.1 74.1.2 84.1.3 9 4.2 4.3 5. project design 9 5.1 9 5.2 13 5.3 136. project implementation15 6.1 15 6.2 15 6.3 167. results and discussion17 7.1 18 7.2 197.1.1 207.1.2 217.1.3 21 7.3 228. conclusion25bibliography26appendix i. 27appendix ii. 28appendix iii. 296reducing cargo damage complaints through using packaging pallet method in wsa line1. introduction wsa line is a growing into an outstanding chinese forwarder in logistics line since its establishment in 1983 at hongkong. our company has been loyal customer ever since our first cooperation of wsa existence in the logistics line, it took our company a couple of years from simply being a customer to becoming a loyal customer of the company. all of our cargos have been carried by wsa line once. by closely talking with the sales of the company. their sales achievement is slowing down after 2008 since complaints is increasing, which failed to meet the expectation of managerment. whats more the forwarder is going through a trying time on the way of breaking into more oversea market.the headquarter of wsa line is located in vancouver, canada. it has 50 branches company in overseas and more than 100 agents in the world. partners in various ports are around the world. shenzhen weicheng sea& air logistics ltd is a branch in shezhen of wsa line. shenzhen wsa was found in 1996, it mainly takes up sea and air servcie, especially has advantages in less container load and full container load. at the same time, it provides warehousing and customs and inspection one-stop service. wsa line enjoys a high visibility and influence in the freight industry. just as the forwarder is starting to make considerable contribution to the companys overall profit, wsa was forced to cut down the number of employee few years ago in shenzhen due to bad sales result. although the price has been reduced to meet customers, wsa appeared to be unappealing to customers in domestically and overseas unlike its competitors. apart from other problems, firm and safe packaging seem to be the challenge of the company faces at current time.to prevent these problems the company needs to upgrade packaging as soon as possible in order to promote its sales achievement domestically and overseas, i.e. to attract more customers. not only the action will bring more order for the company, which means an increase of profit, but it will also have a better facilitate the companys progress towards competing with its transnational counterparts outside china. it will surely set a positive model for the rest of chinese forwarder who are struggling in todays fierce competition.2. problem identification and analysisto completely make a full acknowledgement of the problem of packaging falling out of date. wsa line has conducted a series of analysis including a current situation analysis, analysis on needs and wants related to the concerned problem and a swot analysis showing wsa lines business advantages and disadvantages.2.1 project problemphysical resourceswsa is the pillar enterprise of chinese dosmetic logistics, equipped with an international standard along with the strongest service capability among its domestic counterparts. its history can be traced back for more than two decades ago. through all these years it has involved in air shipment, full container load and less container load, etc. providing customer with convenient and efficient service. it has 50 branches company in oversea and more than 100 agents in the world so far.human resourcesthe management team is composed of people with excellent professional background and ample experience in international logistics. every management of wsals used to be rigorous trained and have rich experience at the same field. currently more than 120 employees, including staff cost budget, customs commisioner, customer service representative, operation elite and document clerk, work in the company which is led by an m.d. with many years of training and the opportunity of being tutored operation theory by some world-famous specialist from overseas. since 1983, shenzhen wsa successively established branch in shanghai, guangzhou, etc. in total with international key carrier( such as maersk and cma-cgm and cscl and so on) and long term cooperative relations with several famous carriers in china.financial resourcesaccording to wsals annual report the overall business income for the year of 2007 reached up to 10 billion rmb. net asset is 5 billion rmb. net income is 2.5 billion rmb. among all the branches shenzhen wsa line alone has contributed 10 million rmb of business income with net profit amounts to 5 million rmb. it is widely known that forwarder is highly profitable; shenzhen wsa lines gross profit margin is more than 30% which tops that of all other branch that the company owns. 3%-5% of sales volume is invested into sales and development every year.clients profile of wsa wsas target customers are middle-to-top of scale enterprises. it has been the first forwarder nationwide to have established sales model and it has attracted hundreds of thousand of members with plenty loyal customers. in fact, a recent customer survey showed that close to 30% of business sales income are from nominated customers by overseas agents.pest analysisthe national economy benefits consumedly from a stable political environment and has entered in a phase of fast growing. this has entailed escalation of peoples spending power and consuming conception which brought huge potential for the development of international logistics. moreover, china also plays an important role in providing an extensive resources in international market. a latest survey shows that the overall volume of sales has reached 0.01 billion annually and is expected to grow with a speed of more than 10% annually. attracted by this big cake of huge market, many international competitors have landed in china over the past years. it has stimulated chinese companies to upgrade service in order to cope with the fierce competition. unfortunately not all chinese forwarder in the competition, as a matter of fact, some of them have already been eliminated by their counterparts. armed with abundant investment capital and a big advantage in logistics field, the situation calls immediate attention to those survived national companies to make improvements in old-style management and upgrade service quality and packaging.2.2 problem analysisms lanny chen, who is the supervisor of shenzhen wsa line in shenzhen. she showed me the results of the latest customers questionnaire which was run in office of shenzhen. the results are listed as followed: there were totally 215 to the questions and have given their opinion. among which, 85% are satisfied with service quality, 65% are happy of freight charge value, 61% think that wsa line packing are not sufficiently safe and convenient for loading and unloading. according to ms lanny chen, the percentage of dissatisfaction regarding packaging is showed by customers surveys which the company runs on a regular basis international. whats more, the same issue had been posed by some customers as well. since wsa line has set up a joint venture with canada way to go (vancouver) logistics inc, the renowned forwarder of world top-grade forwarder, and started to promote wsa lines service in all of its office in world in the year of 2008, i decided to take the chance to visit wsa line in shenzhen and did some field research. the wsa line in shenzhen luohu district; i interviewed many sales persons about the overall performance of shenzhen wsa line. the opinions they offered turned out to be similar: they feel confidently about service quality, but find the packaging to be much firm to that of many forwarders. this has caused limited ability for shenzhen wsa line to attract new clients apart from its regular customers.shenzhen wsa line is not unaware of the packaging issue. the company did a test on one shipment in transportation outside the warehouse in shenzhen. they used a new packaging designed which pallet packed the shipment by others company . the result turned to be more than satisfactory. it has been much stoutness after ever since its appearance in the market at the beginning of 2009. ms lanny chen told me that all of wsa lines complaint about cargoes damage equal almostly to zero every now and then because it has turned out to be the safest packaging on top of less container load even with a little higher price compared to another company of the same field.the above research and the successful experience of less container load showed that wsa line need to improve packaging in order to enhance safety, attracting more domestic customers. at the same time, to promote their service in internation market.2.3 results of problem analysisswot analysesas an enterprise who wants to exceed its competitors it need to have a clear picture of itself and the environment around it. that calls a complete swot analyses. strengthsweaknesseswell known enterprise with long history. strong r&d capability and good managementtalented and highly professional service teamextensive distribution networks inside china with high brand loyalty from customers in domestic market strongest capability among its domestic counterpartsmarket share and service quality still inferior compared with those of transnational corporationsnot enough promotional knowledge and pricing skillslimited knowledge and distribution channels of overseas marketmanagement skill and system not enough updatedlack of a complete mechanism to detain talented employeesopportunitiesthreatsgovernment supportive policies to support national companies to sell their own branded products abroad increase of peoples earnings led to increase of purchasing power huge market capacity for forwarder and sustaining growth of logistics industry highly competitive domestic market puts constant pressure on pricefierce competition from numerous domestic and multinational well known enterprises possible increase in price of running cost and decrease of peoples spending power due to ongoing input pattern inflation from the above swot analyses it can be inferred that as a leading model of domestic enterprise in logistics, wsa line has great potential to make it to an upper level by enhancing its strength, grasping opportunities, overcoming its weakness and finding ways to thrive against threats. for instance, the management can work out a more efficient incentive plan to detain the companys talents and keep stability of core management team. wsa line clearly acknowledges its threat from todays fierce competition and had successfully adopted the strategy for customers differentiation. although it is still a fairly young company with limited market share and is experiencing some setbacks on sales volume. the company can make improvement on services in order to attract more customers. the concept of combining cargoes into pallets is well accepted by consumers, it is little change had been made cargoes to be more safety. the problem has also speeded up its steps towards breaking into overseas markets. wsa line has to take serious consideration about improving packaging issue because it is so crucial in promoting service like that of shenzhen wsa line. furthermore, shenzhen wsa line has set a successful model to be followed. the objective of this project is to change cargoes packaging for the full line of logistics from single carton to with firm pallet packaging by pallet.3. project objective and hypothesis3.1 project objectivethe goal of this project is to upgrade the brand image of wsa line, promote sales of its companys service both in domestic and overseas markets by making improvement to products packaging. the objective is to increase the sales volume and net profit by 10-25% and around 8% respectively.3.2 project hypothesischinas fast growing economy has brought considerable increase in export. as peoples earning grew, so did their levels of consumption. furthermore, peoples consumption level has already risen from the first grade (food and beverage) to the second grade (spiritual). this has brought huge potential for the expansion of market capacity for consumption. it is hypothesized that only by changing shenzhen wsa lines packaging sales volume and net profit will grow by 10-25% and around 8% respectively in the next year.4. project rationale4.1 project rationale4.1.1 in the first place, why wsa line need to make improvement to cargos packaging? the question draws attention to the importance of packaging for one shippment. people may not realize that packages are actually the first thing with which customers have firm packaging contacts with even before they talk to the sales representitve. therefore, pallets play an important role in logistics transportation, especially for less container load since it need move about 10 times since cargoes from factory to destination. a safe package is able to create convenience value for customers and promotional value for the logistics line. package provides customer with the primary impression of the forwarder which will determine whether the product will be sent without any damage. this theory especially applies for the industry such as glasswork, handicraft and fragile care products manufacturing. the pallet packaging for wsa line was designed by top pallet company of china which specially make pallet for export products. at the beginning of the wsa line creation 20 years ago and they were selling well in domestic and oversea market before the increase in sales volume started to slow down for the year of 2008. this should draw the companys attention to the easy damage packaging and make immediate changes with it. like roger a. kerin, steven w. hartley and william rudelius (2004) write in the book of marketing: the c