Internet of Things in Enhancing Competitive Capabilities: An Exploratory Study

As a result of intensifying competition between transportation companies and an attempt to reduce costs, deliver on time, maintain products quality and maintain high flexibility in transportation, it has become imperative for transportation companies to go toward using modern technology, including the Internet of things that may ensure achieving competitive capabilities of companies and continue to remain in the market. The study aims to determine the role of the Internet of things in achieving the competitive capabilities (cost, quality, time, flexibility) and priorities of transportation companies and highlighting the importance of the Internet of things because the transport activity is considered as one of the important logistical activities that have a large share in the cost of products. The theoretical part has been written based on previous literature review, whereas, the practical part has been conducted by using a checklist which is distributed to 31 commodity land transportation companies operating at Ibrahim Al-Khalil International Crossing in Iraq by using the Likert triple scale and arranging the scores on the scale; (Agree, somewhat agree, disagree) with weights (2, 1, and 0) respectively. The most important conclusion reached by the current study is that the Internet of things has a significant role in achieving the competitive capabilities of transportation companies which is proved by the result of the total agreement rate up to 71%. The research presented a set of recommendations which are: The necessity of conducting more research on this topic to enrich the current study and benefit from the current study idea to improve transportation companies’ performance in general.