Aim: This study deals with two research questions:

RQ1: What competitive advantages does DHL gain from external and internal factors?

RQ2: What competitive disadvantage does DHL have? And what DHL can learn from analyzing competitive disadvantage?

Method: primary data for this research has been mainly collected through interviews. Moreover, the official reports are used as secondary data to present the empirical situation of DHL.

Conclusion: By concerning the external and internal factors of DHL, the SWOT analysis is conducted. The strength of DHL is customer satisfaction, green programme etc; weakness is price, liability insurance etc; opportunities are cooperation development, innovation etc; and threats are tough competitors. The strength and opportunities are regarded as DHL’ competitive advantages, while the weakness and threats are DHL’s competitive disadvantage that need to be fixed.

Further study & Implication: In this thesis there is no information to indicate if DHL has any unmet needs, but it must be there. If DHL can enhance itself by providing unmet needs to customer, there is no doubt DHL would be more competitive in the 3PL industry. It is interesting to investigate more work on DHL unmet needs.

This study contributes to the companies which plan to develop their competition from inside to outside in the market, especially in 3PL industry. This thesis gives authors deep insights into company success factors and suggestions for dealing with the problems which company may encounter.