Selection of a fulfillment center in the US market : the case of exporter SMEs in Turkey

Abstract

For the last couple of decades, globalization carved the path for a more interconnected medium of trade for businesses, ranging between large-size corporations and SMEs, to penetrate into new markets. As a result of this high-paced medium of transactions, businesses have been opting to outsource some of their supply-chain and logistics-related processes to some particular 3rd party firms, such as fulfillment centers. SMEs, however, can achieve even higher competitive advantages by working with fulfillment service providers for their export operations to foreign markets, which is being reinforced by several factors. This survey particularly investigates the Turkey-based SMEs’ selection criteria on the appropriate fulfillment service providers for their export operations to the United States of America, through a wide-coverage questionnaire that measures companies’ perception on fulfillment centers. Consequently, the presence of locality and the effectiveness of logistics are found to be significant for Turkey-based SMEs that develop export plans and/or operations to the United States, for their fulfillment center selection criteria.