Research On High-speed Rail Pricing Method From The Perspective Of Competition

Many people have higher requirements on travel experience and travel safety in recent years,thus high-speed rail and civil aviation have gradually become the first choice and the competition between two means of transportation has become increasingly fierce.As for passengers,ticket price is an important influence factor when they determine which kind of transportation they will take.As for transportation companies,reasonable ticket price is also an essential thing since it can not only ensure large-scale market,but it can also make companies maximize their profits.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the issue of making efficient high-speed rail ticket price.The aim of this paper was to determine reasonable ticket price of high-speed rail under the competition with civil aviation by constructing bi-level programming model.Firstly,in order to study competitive behavior,the author analyzed passengers' travel choice and constructed the passengers5 travel utility function to calculate passengers' flow sharing rate.Secondly,the author analyzed the reasonable ticket price of high-speed rail by constructing bi-level programming model,which could maximize both high-speed rail company's revenue and passengers' profits.Finally,the author used an example to verify the rationality of bi-level programming model.By analyzing the real example,the author held the view that bi-level programming was a useful method and it provided a reasonable way for determining the ticket price of high-speed rail.The specific work of this paper is as follows:An introduction of major pricing theories and pricing methods.There was a brief introduction of transportation price and pricing principles of Chinese high-speed rail.The author respectively expounded Marx's labor theory of value,supply-demand equilibrium pricing theory,and the most commonly used pricing methods.In addition,the status quo of China's high-speed rail passengers' ticket price and its competitiveness with civil aviation were briefly analyzed.Research on passengers' travel choice.Based on consumer behavior theory,the author analyzed passengers5 travel process and the factors which could affect passengers'travel choice.By quantifying passengers' travel utility function,the paper established passengers' flow sharing rate estimation method,which could distinguish different sharing rates based on different seats.The method could not only study high-speed rail and civil aviation's competitiveness but could also be useful for constructing bi-level programming model of high-speed rail.Constructing bi-level programming model.On the premise of subdividing the different seats of high-speed rail and civil aviation,taking into account the influencing factors of passengers' travel choice,and constructing the passengers' flow sharing rate model,the author used a bi-level programming model to analyze high-speed rail pricing method.In theory,the ticket price determined by this model could maximize the revenue of high-speed rail company and minimize the travel cost of passengers at the same time.Case study on high-speed rail pricing method.The author analyzed the competition between the high-speed rail and the civil aviation in the Beijing-Wuhan section at the end of this thesis.On the basis of questionnaire and data statistics,reasonable ticket prices of different seats were calculated by using the model constructed in this thesis.The calculation results in MATLAB showed that high-speed rail had an advantage in the competition with civil aviation and the second-class seats of high-speed rail occupied more than 30%of the market share.The results also showed that the best ticket price of high-speed rail from Beijing to Wuhan were 515.8542 CNY for second-class seats,808.3151 CNY for first-class seats and 1570.3522 CNY for business seats.The results of the example proved that the bi-level programming model was reasonable in the formulation of high-speed rail ticket price.With 9 Figures,24 Tables and 145 Reference Literatures.