Orchestrator role of third party logistics providers (3Pls)in services marketing concept and its effect on supply chain collaboration

Third party logistics service providers (3PLs) have important role in logistics triad, and supply chain collaboration. However, there is a lack in marketing literature about their consideration as one of the natural parties of the supply chain. Indeed, related with their firm sizes, firm tenures and their service offerings in recent years, they have become to act as the orchestrators of the supply chain, and they should be increasingly incorporated to supply chain collaboration. This study aims to prove the orchestrator role of 3PLs in Turkey by stating their standardization, visibility and neutral arbitration roles between suppliers and producers, then the impact of this orchestrator role on supply chain collaboration. In-dept interviews were conducted on eight logistics professionals consisting both practitioners and academics of logistics in order to create a scale to measure orchestrator role of 3PLs, and check the current supply chain collaboration scale?s adaptability on Turkish logistics sample. Final data were collected from 232 managers of logistics firms using a cross-sectional survey. The scales were found reliable and valid so that multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses of the study. The results showed that the 3PLs in Turkey have reached to an improved role as the orchestrators of the supply chain, and this role of 3PLs have positive impact on supply chain collaboration. However, since this impact is found at the low level, it can be interpreted as they are still not incorporated to supply chain collaboration adequately.