The Pre-sale Research, Based On The Differential Pricing Of Accommodation For Container Ships

The current rapid economic growth has created favorable conditions for the development of shipping industry. The growth rate of container throughput in various ports of China as well as the increasing quantity of shipment of shipping lines both suggest that the shipping industry has entered a new stage. Possessing an obvious advantage, container transportation at sea has become a main way of maritime transportation and grown rapidly.What container lines are in pursuit of is maximization of profit and minimization of cost. Based on the principle of economies of scale, ultra large container ships are being built as an avenue to drive cost down.Transportation space or transportation capacity is precious storage for container lines. Faced with uncertain demand and increasingly drastic market competition, container lines' effectively distributing the quantity of slots among variable ports in many lines is to cut down the opportunity loss during the slots presale process. That using the advantage of professional shipping to fulfill customers' demand efficiently in the purpose of maximizing company's benefit is very crucial for liner industry's existence in the future. This urges container lines to adopt valid operation management measures to increase utilization rate of slots for reducing cost and improving revenue. Aimed at taking full use of loading capacity and container capacity, the methods of slots presale are taken into account to achieve expected management revenue.Container lines encounter two kinds of risks, empty-slot risk and over-sale risk. These risks mostly root in uncertainty of merchants' behavior. Only a few of them come from the alteration of interior transportation capacity.This dissertation firstly serves as a general introduction to the research status of slots presale at home and board, problems in operation and research methods. Whereafter the large-scale trend for container ship and container rate are studied with the conclusion that it is possible and indispensable to introduce slots presale management to liner shipping industry. Then the presale and pricing of slots are focused on and the assumption of differential pricing on the basis of slot presale is brought forward. And the model of slots presale revenue is established sufficiently considering the uncertainty of merchants' behavior and differential pricing. Brief cases of presale tactics under different risks are studied with MATLAB and Eviews. Finally, it is drawn as the conclusion that scientific and rational application and promotion of slots presale management in container lines will surely make this industry undergo a revolutionary reform and that the pioneers, who implement slots presale management scientifically and systematically, are certain to benefit from the fruits born therethrough.