Thesis on Marketing Communication Strategies for Seaports raffles recognition
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Rotterdam, September 2011 --- Seaports nowadays operate in a highly competitive market. The time of monopolies is gone as the ‘hinterland’ is accessible for all competitors. Clear differentiation is needed to gain competitiveness. Therefore, a marketing strategy is increasingly important for all ports in order to communicate this differentiation. However, while they can add a lot of value, marketing strategies for ports have so far not been researched to a large extent.
In her bachelor thesis Marketing Communication Strategies for Seaports, Jessica Siep, International Business Administration graduate 2011 at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM), combined the knowledge acquired during her IBA studies with the expertise acquired during her minor Maritime Economics and Logistics.
In her paper, Jessica interprets existing knowledge from the academic field of marketing in business for seaports. Then, defining seaports as services-based businesses, she formulates and analyses marketing communication strategies for seaports, in particular for the Ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. She concludes that the marketing strategy ports follow will depend heavily on natural factors, such as the city it belongs to and the type of port it is. She concluded by examining whether the way ports profile themselves to the community and the sector indeed reflected their respective strategy.
As a result is this research, Jessica recently received a scholarship of € 17,000 on behalf of the MEL Trust fund, which will allow her to start the Executive MSc in Maritime Economics and Logistics at RSM in November 2011. Also, early September Jessica was nominated for the Rotterdam Communicatie Scriptieprijs, awardingthe best thesis in the field of communication by a Rotterdam university of university college student. Moreover, she has been contacted by the Port of Rotterdam to do an internship there.
