Utilization of DSS to the Promotion and Conclusion of Charters in the Shipping and Supply Chain Context

In recent times, the importance of shipping services has been rapidly increasing. As a consequence, shipping companies seek to capitalize on every available strategy and opportunity to promote their services and manage to promote and conclude charters. This highlights the role of digital marketing and the utilization of customer data originating from corporate websites. Moreover, to this aim, shipping companies can utilize various Decision Support Systems (DSSs) available, based on their corporate goals. This research focused on gathering big data from the web pages of the 5 largest shipping companies in the worldwide economic context, which were analyzed by utilizing various DSSs to evaluate their effect on the performance of the shipping firms. The collected data were elaborated through statistical analyses (correlation and linear regression), and their coefficients were used as inputs for the deployed Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) DSS model. As a result, from the utilization of the DSS with the website analytical data from the shipping companies, the authors found that it is essential for these firms to reduce the bounce rate of their website customers and visitors in order to enhance their ranking in search engines. Thus, by ranking higher in their customers’ search engine results, shipping companies would be able to promote and conclude more charters. The role of DSSs in this goal of shipping companies is highlighted by this study as a determinant.