Samenvatting

This paper is an intermediate result of a PhD research project undertaken by Lenny Visser with Cees Ruijgrok as supervisor. The final objective of this project is to measure thresholds in logistics outsourcing decisions, especially for the chemical sector. If we are able to measure the relative importance of the underlying factors of these decision processes, we can also derive recommendations for removing or relieving these thresholds. For the measurement of these thresholds a Stated Preference experiment will be used. The paper describes the first steps in the design of this experiment by using theoretical and empirical findings. The model we propose is based of the concept of profit maximizing by minimizing integral logistic costs and maximizing revenues. This theory is checked by performing interviews with representatives of a number of case studies in the chemical industry.