Purpose: This study examines the mediation effects of time-based competitiveness, cost-based competitiveness and customer performance between logistics outsourcing and financial performance. Design/methodology/approach: The study relied on a questionnaire as the primary data collection instrument and further employed partial least squares structural equation modelling technique to test all formulated hypotheses. Findings: The results demonstrate that logistics outsourcing has a significant positive impact on time-based competitiveness, cost-based competitiveness, customer performance and financial performance. Time-based competitiveness and cost-based competitiveness were both found to have a significant positive impact on financial performance; however, customer performance had no significant impact on financial performance. The mediation analysis further indicates that while both time-based competitiveness and cost-based competitiveness play mediation effects between logistics outsourcing and financial performance, customer performance plays no mediation effect between logistics outsourcing and financial performance. Research limitations/implications: The sampled firms for this study came from a single emerging country; hence, the results cannot be generalized or imported to reflect the results that may be obtained from other emerging geographical settings. Practical implications: The results provide sufficient evidence for managers to turn their attention to logistics outsourcing, as a transformative business initiative, to gain time-based and cost-based competitiveness so as to improve financial performance. Originality/value: The study provides significant insight and makes an additional contribution to literature in the area of logistics outsourcing, especially by collecting data from an emerging country. Modelling time-based competitiveness, cost-based competitiveness and customer performance as mediating variables between logistics outsourcing and financial performance make this work relatively different from other studies.