Friday 6 March 2015

Maersk abandons their Daily Maersk service


Good afternoon All

The worlds largest shipping line, Maersk, has abandoned their brave attempt at product innovation/differentiation, the Daily Maersk. The general idea behind this service, first launched in Sep-11 (hard to believe it was almost 4 years ago) was that European importers from Asia would pay a premium price for a service which claimed to depart daily and had uplift guarantees.

The problem was that it wasn't a daily service at all and so this seemed to devalue the product, and secondly rates from Asia fluctuate wildly and apart from certain times of the year (lead up to Chinese New Year) and from Aug-Oct, there is a lot of capacity, allied to the fact that shipping lines are investing in larger and larger vessels (say 8,000 TEU 10 years ago to 15,000 TEU and rising in 2014) so

1. the lines have the space
2. they need to fill it
3. importers don't see a need to pay a premium for products like Daily Maersk

I suppose it's proof, if ever it were needed, that if you do innovate, you need to put forward something which the market really needs, promote it well - and price it at the right level.


I think that another major reason for it's failure was that the product name was very attractive but when people explored further, they didn't feel it was such an innovation, and certainly not worth paying more, when they could achieve reliability and cost effectiveness via the other Asia-Europe carriers.

http://www.lloydsloadinglist.com/freight-directory/news/Premium-Daily-Maersk-service-abandoned/61956.htm?utm_source=Lloyd%27s+Loading+List+Daily+News+Bulletin&utm_campaign=7ab76e1f48-Wed_30_July7_30_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1a5c244239-7ab76e1f48-256747097

Kind Regards


Andy

Andy Cliff
Director

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