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Recently, inland Chinese regions have become the major manufacturing base for most manufacturing firms. Accordingly, with this change, many shipping companies attempted to provide proper logistics service activities to maintain their business. Hence, this study aims to empirically examine the logistics service preference segments for Chinese landlocked regions from a manufacturer's perspective. By understanding these attributes, not only shipping companies but also logistics companies can provide proper service to their customers.

The preliminary logistics service attributes are determined using an interview and in-depth questionnaire with logistics experts from the local private and government sectors in southwest China and few international logistics coordinators. This study conducted importance-performance analysis (IPA) and used a customer dissatisfaction attitude index to evaluate the priorities for improving logistics service attributes. Cluster analysis is subsequently performed to group respondents on the basis of their factor scores.

Five crucial logistics service dimensions were identified by the factor analysis, namely, packing and storage, logistics supporting, logistics information, transportation planning and information inquiry. The results also revised the IPA model. The top five service attributes that needed to be improved were carrier selection, ship scheduling inquiry, route planning and inquiry, cargo receiving station and freight forwarding. By applying the factor analysis, this study reduced the 27 logistics attributes derived from the literature review to five underlying critical factors.

This study contributes to the inland logistics by investigating the preferences of manufacturers in Chinese landlocked regions. Moreover, in land logistics in China is lacking in the literature; hence, several important implications can be derived from this study's results.

This paper aims to address the following questions: is good liner shipping connectivity a requisite for merchandise imports plus exports? What is the average of merchandise imports plus exports of the countries neighboring China? Do the merchandise imports plus exports of these countries correspond to each country’s own merchandise imports plus exports or liner shipping connectivity index (LSCI)?

The authors spatially analyze liner shipping connectivity and merchandise imports plus exports using 2016 data and a common framework for linear regression to establish the relationship amongst a country’s LSCI and its merchandise imports plus exports and between its merchandise imports plus exports and those of its neighbors. Merchandise imports plus exports of countries are not necessarily independent of each other, and countries that are contiguous may produce similar observations.

North America and Western Europe comprised clusters of countries that participated more actively in the international trading system, while Africa’s countries had less international trade than average. The study identifies and quantifies the geographical ripple of transport infrastructure on merchandise trade from a national perspective. Notably, a spatially lagged term improved the model’s ability to account for variations in merchandise imports plus exports across countries.

The spatial lag of merchandise imports plus exports can contribute to specifying the spread of merchandise imports plus exports beyond what the authors would anticipate from a country’s network of liner shipping.