Impact of Globalization on Logistics Costs and influence on 3PL Revenue Growth (2012)

In my opinion Logistics industry can be described as wheels of Globalization and key to the market expansion and competitive product availability to the growing global consumers. Dynamic business conditions and confronting economic conditions are driving globalization. Globalization is resulting due to expanding markets, exploding retail market, product proliferation, ever changing needs of customers, economic downturn, cost pressures, technology, cultural integration and government policies around the world. It would be wrong to assume that globalization influences economy and trade only; we are seeing integration in the areas of culture, media, education, research and development, tourism and even climate change.  On political front, we see collaboration and collective approach in addressing daunting challenges we face today.   Globalization will make our societies more creative and prosperous, but also more vulnerable and in transforms economies more competitive.

Let us review some vital statistics (Source: Armstrong & Associates Inc.).  First let us review the region wise Logistics spend vs. 3PL revenue (2012):

Obviously Asia Pacific Region heads the chart in all categories if we exclude remaining other countries which were consolidated under other countries.  It would be worth looking into Asia Pacific region by country in order to identify the growth countries.  Top five are highlighted here under:

If we look globally, it would be interesting to compare the numbers and easy to identify the globalization impact on different countries:

It would be very interesting to analyse 2013 numbers as the world trade is not promising.  World trade is expected to grow by 2.5 percent this year and 4.5 percent in 2014 (source: The World Trade Organisation).  More and more companies are developing agile supply chains and compressing product supply lead time and at the same time reduce the cost of production.  In order  to achieve all these goals, outsourcing supply chains is one of the solutions.  According to CAPGEMINI Consulting 2014 report 72% of the shippers are planning to increase use of outsourced logistics services and whereas the 3PL companies believe that 78% increase in business.  Let us hope economy responds well in 2014!