The impacts of Covid-19 on logistics operators business: an empirical analysis

In December 2019 the first suspected case of Covid-19 was discovered in China. This disease led to the biggest health, economic and social crisis in the past 100 years. Many sectors have been affected by the mass lockdowns, including the logistics sector, which has suffered in travel and transport. The purpose of this research is to identify what changes and impacts logistics operators have experienced in Piedmont as a result of the pandemic, both in terms of business volumes and operational organization. To achieve this intent, a questionnaire was prepared containing 22 questions divided into two sections aimed at investigating and analyzing the performance of 3PLs during the pandemic. The first section analyses how firms are positioned in their target market, while the second section focuses on the changes that firms have experienced in the past two years. All questions are structured with multiple-choice answers; in addition, questions designed to highlight an increase or decrease in a service are scored using a Likert scale. The AIDA database has been used to select the sample of companies using the following variables: the ATECO 2007 codes, the Piedmont region and the budget of the company available for the years 2019 and 2020. The response rate to the questionnaire was high, reaching 94 responses out of a sample of 420 companies. Following an initial demographic analysis of the sample, the companies’ performance has been analyzed by cross-referencing the companies’ performance. Thus, identifying behavioral trends amidst novel emergency situations. Lastly, the analysis also attempted to find a correlation between performance, services offered and size of the company.