Air cargo services in Asian industrialising economies: Electronics manufacturers and the strategic use of advanced producer services

The use of advanced producer services is critical to manufacturing firms in industrialising economies, but most research on such services has been situated in wealthy post-industrial economies. We examine the use of one class of advanced producer services - those provided by the air cargo industry - by manufacturers in Southeast Asia. The air cargo industry has grown rapidly in this region and plays an increasingly important intra- and interregional integrative role. We are interested specifically in the demand for knowledge-intensive advanced air cargo services, which include for instance time-definite express services, by electronics manufacturers in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Employing several analytical approaches, we find that demand for advanced air cargo services is related to the degree to which a firm's operations are knowledge-intensive, its size, and the scope of its internationalisation.Received: 4 June 2002, Accepted: 12 November 2002, JEL Classification: L63, L93, N75We gratefully acknowledge funding provided by the National Science Foundation, Geography and Regional Science Program for ?Air Cargo Services and Competitive Advantage in Industrialising Economies? under BCS 0078734 (TRL) and BCS 0078621 (JTB). We wish to thank our colleagues in Malaysia: Professor Morshidi Sirat, Dr Hassan Naziri Khalid, and Mohamad Haron Harashid, School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang; and in the Philippines: Daniel Mabazza and Jonas Gaffud, Department of Geography, U of Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. Joshua Lepawsky and Brian Zacho provided invaluable research assistance during the fieldwork and with the subsequent analyses.