Research On Pricing Theories And Methods Of Transportation Service

In China, present theoretical research on transportation service pricing is not systemic, neither the practice, which have led to the lagging of theory far behind the up-to-date practice and have affected the healthy development of China's transportation. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the study on this area from the general aspect of the transportation industry, by forming the theoretical frame of transportation service pricing, in order to give some instruction to China's practice and to promote China` transportation industry.This paper is targeting at the research on transportation service. Starting from the concept and the characteristics of transportation service, it analyzes China's practice at transportation service, puts forward the universal pricing theory of transportation service and discusses the proper way to price China's transportation service, by literature review.The main conclusions and innovations made by the author are as following:1. Transportation services are proposed to, instead of transportation products, refer to the outputs of the transportation industry, and then the concept of transportation service has got developed. From the general aspect of the transportation industry, the pricing theories and methods of the transportation service have been discussed, leading to the forming of the systemic theory frame.2. The influence of the qualitative difference of transportation service on costs and customer perceived interests has been found by this paper. Meanwhile, transportation service pricing has been suggested to be decided by the value assessment by both supply and demand part. The market of transportation service can be divided according to two factors, the level of transportation demand and the level of the quality of transportation service. The distribution of value added between customers and transportation enterprises can be used for the pricing of transportation service.3. The government is thought to take the responsibility to guarantee the basic traveling demand of low-income people by the provision of lower price transportation. When it comes to the pricing of flexible transportation service and higher-level basic transportation service, the enterprises can benefit from the value added. 4. The author suggests to open the market of flexible transportation service, and to introduce competition to the basic transportation service. Pricing guided by government can also be useful in some market providing basic transportation service. For the high fixed-cost, transportation cost is suggested to be decided by Operation Cost Method.