Port Marketing Strategies and the Challenges of Maritime Globalization

Abstract

Ports use port marketing as a guideline to face the demands in view of more open and competitive markets; hence, port marketing is considered as a high-value tool in order to search and capture new markets and products. This chapter collects those elements that shape the market plans and, notably, the base concepts related to the strategic mission of a Port Authority. In order to do that, the existing indicators of the variables of the strategy are disaggregated: product, price, allocation criteria and promotion. At the same time, the different strategic plans are assessed. On the one hand, we classify the offensive positions, including those actions aimed at increasing the services in the markets, investing to improve the competitive positions, and investing to gain access to new markets. On the other hand, we include the defensive positions in the strategic plans, that is, those actions aimed at protecting the achieved position and discerning other strategies of disinvestment. Finally, the axes enabling to measure the potential of each Port Authority are included.