The activities of alliances between liner carriers have increased intensively since the last decade, satisfying a whole new requirement of shippers stemmed from the industrial globalization. The development of strategic alliances is very important to the liner industry, especially based on a perspective of the booming market-Asia. For finding co-operative niches, possible disadvantages, successful factors, and the future development of the alliance co-operation, the investigation in this paper

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... ocused on members of the CKYH, a potential strategic alliance group with four major carriers in Asia. We employed the Delphi method to conduct two rounds of survey for procuring the consensus opinions of participants among these four companies. Their responses reveal that strategic alliances have become an essential tool for large carriers to extend their service ranges in the global markets. Mutual trust between partners is a cornerstone to ensure the success of alliances, and this tendency will continue to develop for supporting the global requirement of the maritime logistic system.