Source: Adapted from Mary R. Brooks and Thanos A. Pallis (2013). Time to assess: Port users perspectives are important, Port Technology International.
The relation between the value attributed to specific parameters of port activities and the gap between importance and performance provides actionable data for developing strategic plans for investment and marketing.
Ports need to invest in improving parameters, which are important for the (groups of) users that they want to prioritize and they identify a gap between importance and performance, and then to issues of secondary attention or lowest priorities, which are of less importance. Beyond these, there are cases that performance is such that it deserves to be marketed, as the port or terminal performs as well as expected, or it is of little importance to users and therefore there is no requirement for action.