Guidelines to Develop Air Freight Forwarders in Thailand

Abstract

This research aimed to study the guidelines to develop the service business of air freight forwarders in Thailand. The methodologies included documentary analysis and interview with the 9 related persons; as 6 heads of the air freight forwarders and 3 university lecturers from the School of Logistics and Supply Chain Management on the topic about factors affecting air freight forwarders. The guideline has been developed from PEST analysis, 5 force model and SWOT analysis. The results found that the major factors affecting the air freight forwarders were global business competition, one stop service, deregulation of international business, open sky policy of commercial airlines, growth of online technologies and consumer behavior changes. Therefore, the air freight forwarders have to develop the multi-skills of their human resources, particularly transportation and logistics technology, such as applying ERP system, EDI, etc. Moreover, Thai government needs to support the air freight forwarders in terms of loan allocation, revenue and taxation and essential infrastructure related with the air freight business. The integration of complete works was suggested to increase air freight service competition, especially speed and cost saving of air freight such as alliance strategy, merger and acquisition with international companies from emerging countries such as China.