The Container Shipping Industry In A Competitive Environment, Multi-customer Base Pricing Decision-making Research

The Financial Crisis and the dismissal of FEFC in 2008 have turned a prosperous container business into a recession—decreased of the international trades, delayed/cancelled the new ship orders, intensified competition, and collapsed rates. Most of carriers become loss-giving, which indicates that the shipping industry enters a new industrial cycle. How does a carrier adjust his cooperate strategies appropriately under the circumstance of the transformation? How could a carrier be surviving, developing and expanding by taking advantages of existing opportunities in the downturn? It is time for us to think about these questions.The subject of the paper is the pricing strategy of multi-client segmentations in a competitive shipping industrial-by illustrating the Asia-Europe service of Maersk Line. The paper, in the first chapter, introduces the history and current status of the containerized shipping industry. In the second chapter, the paper lists factors that are impacting the pricing decisions by means of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. Then the paper, given the practice of Maersk Line, analyzes several eligible pricing strategy portfolios based on some basic concepts of revenue optimization. Last but not least, the paper reviews the efficiency and the effect of dual entitlement. All in all, the paper aims to help the readers better understand on a carrier, on the whole market and the competitions. Always fit the right clients with the right product portfolios.The quantitative analysis consists of the combinations / fluctuation of the freight, the industrial monopoly, the price sensitivity and the tendency prospects. The qualitative analysis is mostly about the industrial environment and the competitive tactics and strategies,The paper adopts the regression models learned in Data, Models, and decisions to study the correlation of utilization; capacity and freight in Asia-Europe corridors: the paper adopts supply and demand models learned in Managerial Economics to discuss the pricing approaches in a prioritized service level; the paper also applies some concepts learned from International management, operations management and marketing management to the writer's daily working practice, as well as the essence of revenue optimization.The writer is expecting that the paper can be a summary of the two-year-and-half MBA courses study, in the meantime, a sublimate of yearly working experience. The writer is looking for a theoretically broader point of view, as a guidance to optimize the decisions in the real business world.