ABSTRACT
Economic globalization supported by technological improvement and price reduction in transportation and communications –amongst others- has generated complex worldwide systems of supply, production and distribution that demand high efficiency in the management of the logistic system. This new reality provides the logistic system with a significant role in products’ final costs and consequently influences both company and geographical competitiveness.
Presently, production is structured by networks in which each node is a specialized part of the production chain.  In this context, more and more companies decide to outsource their logistic services, although with different levels of implementation depending on different geographical areas. This situation has brought up a new concept of the third party logistics provider (3PL) as a company specialized in providing logistic services to the supply and distribution chains. 
Both Spain and the Valencian Community are below European average in logistic outsourcing, and way below the United States average, all of which leads us to investigate the reasons. 
This thesis focuses on analyzing the Valencian Community third party logistics main variables and their possible correlations. In order to do so -and considering that logistic services companies are not yet completely listed- we must first create a methodology that identifies and relates them in a reliable way. We then apply this methodology to third party logistic companies in the Valencian Community. 
Once we have identified these third party logistic companies, we study their characteristics from two different analytical points of view: a) we establish their characteristics, classify them and arrange them in order of importance; b) we apply factorial analysis and multiple regressions. Under the first perspective, we differentiate third party logistic companies with head offices in the Valencian Community from national companies that only have local offices in the Community. Factorial analysis and multiple regressions are used to study possible correlations by pairs between company size, level of specialization and technology intensity of third party logistic providers that operate in the Valencian Community. 
Lastly, we find it important to state that although this specific analysis is developed in the Valencian Community area, the methodology and various considerations and analysis used can also be applied to different geographical areas.