Strategic Alliances in Container Shipping: A Review of the Literature and Future Research Agenda

Strategic alliances are the most common type of collaboration agreement used by shipping lines to provide worldwide maritime container transport services. Since their first appearance just before the mid-1990s, they have progressed to account for 90% of global container shipping capacity with the top eight container operators organizing today their East/West route services through one of the main three strategic alliances. This paper reviews comprehensively and critically the literature on the subject, over 25 years of research on this topic. This includes 85 articles published in peer-reviewed journals between 1994 and 2019, and analyzed and grouped into three main research areas: formation, management, and optimization of strategic alliances. The output of the analysis is then used to provide a future research agenda.