Competitiveness of seaport is determined by a range of advantages that was earned by the seaport to attract their respective customers. Competitiveness is essential for seaport to make tactical plans, to maintain and improve their attractiveness among the clients. The imbalance of hinterland connectivity in Malaysian seaports between road and rail affects the efficiency of Malaysian seaports to be at the optimum level of competitiveness. Besides, the increasing of vessel capacity in the world affects the efficiency of seaport operations to accommodate larger container ships. However, nowadays the trends of seaport competitiveness are changing due to the dynamic nature of maritime business. Hence, analysis on the trend on seaport competitiveness is very crucial to plan and execute the operational strategy to achieve optimum benefits from the trade activities. Nevertheless, most of the researches focused on competitiveness trend in the world but no specific research has been conducted at Malaysian seaports in particular. Therefore, this paper aims to analyse the evolution of seaport competitiveness in Malaysian seaport from 1970 to 2019 and propose a competitiveness cluster for Malaysian seaport to ease the policy revisiting procedure for future development. Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been employed in this paper to develop a comprehensive competitiveness cluster for Malaysian seaports to understand the current trend of competitiveness among Malaysian seaports in comparison to the global trend as a key preparation for future demand. IT application, seaport services, supply chain, government policy, connectivity, availability, hinterland accessibility, inland terminal cost, transportation network, operation efficiency and seaport cost are the key components of competitiveness in Malaysian seaports from 1970 until 2019. Findings revealed that there are three clusters in Malaysian seaport competitiveness which are shipping services, seaport and terminal, and government policy.

The seaport system is one of the complex systems which involves many stakeholders; i.e. seaport cluster; seaport authority, seaport operator, government, shipping agent, forwarding agent etc. Due to this concern, the aims of this research is revealed the relationship between the three elements of seaport quality towards the seaport competitiveness. Subsequently, the scope of this research identified three elements of seaport quality (seaport effectiveness; seaport reliability; seaport governance) and seaport competitiveness as the influential elements from the Malaysian Seaport perspective. Then, the methodology of this research used quantitative method analysis and questionnaire as the instrument for the Malaysian seaport cluster stakeholders. Multiple regressions and the reliability test were employed for the data analysis. The 143 out of 180 respondents had approved after data screening. Consequently, the finding was the 8 influential elements of seaport quality onto seaport competitiveness; (i) highly stability on strong cooperation about ship and cargoes, (ii) systematic arrangement of facilities and equipment, (iii) demonstrates good understanding of client requirement, (iv) reliability on the ability of equipment and facilities, (v) easy understanding towards the implementation of the guidelines of process involves, (vi) highly attending by customer on the cooperation through community, (vii) highly understanding and knowledge to the security compliance and (viii) minimizing the ship turnaround time, and those were statistically significant under the Malaysian seaport quality perspectives. As conclusion, the element of seaport quality would contribute as the benchmark to improvise the Malaysian seaport competitiveness. The contribution from this research is foreseen under the developing the guidelines through the seaport quality while enhancing the seaport operation efficiency and the strategies development in determining the continuous sustainability of seaport industry.