An Overview of Maritime Logistics: Trends and Research Agenda

Abstract

The increasing importance of maritime transportation in entire logistics flows have increased the interest in maritime logistics. Despite the growing body of the literature on this emerging discipline, there is lack of a detailed investigation regarding the categorization and emerging topics. The primary aim of this study is to analyse the advances in the literature and to suggest a research agenda for this concept by exploring the main research domains in this phenomenon. To achieve these aims, this study adopts content analysis-based review method to examine the concept and citation analysis to explore the latent structure of maritime logistics. The research streams have been obtained through two databases; the main themes, highlighted topics, and related analytical categories have been investigated through content analysis. Citation and co-citation analysis were conducted to understand the intellectual structure of the studies and the relationship of the analytical categories. The study presents a comprehensive synthesis of existing research suggesting a systematic source of information for both scholars and practitioners, shaping the future research agenda. The findings indicate that there is an increasing emphasis on design, optimization, and planning of port and ship operations while sustainability and marketing perspectives are somehow neglected in the researches.