General level of 3PL use in the area of Toluca, Mexico
Circa 21 per cent of the surveyed firms do not use 3PL at all (Table IV). Another 45 per
cent outsource just one or two logistics activities and only 33 per cent of the firms
outsource three or more activities. The percentage of surveyed firms that do outsource
at least one logistics activity ð100 2 21:3 ¼ 78:7percentÞ is considerably higher than
the 32 per cent reported by El Economista (2003) and the 54 per cent reported for most
important Latin American companies (El Financiero, 2004a, b). We attribute this
difference to the sample’s bias towards larger manufacturers, half of them operating
with foreign capital.
The non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test (Conover, 1980) was used to evaluate P1.
As expected, the results were significant, revealing large differences in 3PL use
depending on the firm’s size (P-value ¼ 0.000) and level of foreign investment