Research On Collaborative Pricing Of Customized Bus And Ride-sharing

With the rapid growth of personalized and diversified travel demand,the shared travel service platform aiming at providing multiple transports for passengers is constantly transforming and upgrading.From the perspective of shared travel service platform,he not only wants to maximize the total profit of the platform,but also takes into account the development of various transport modes.Due to the passenger competition among transport modes,the pricing of one transport mode not only affects its own demand and profit,but also has significant impacts on other transport modes.Therefore,how to formulate the collaborative pricing strategy of multiple transport modes is an urgent problem to be solved for diversified shared travel platforms.For a shared travel platform with customized bus and ride-sharing,the pricing problem of the two transport modes is studied in the context of competition and cooperation,with the consideration of the impacts of price,waiting time and ride comfort on passenger utility.The main work of this dissertation includes:(1)Based on fixed choice probability model and exponential choice probability model,the game pricing method is proposed by maximizing the respective profits of customized bus and ride-sharing.The equilibrium solution of the optimal pricing of two transport modes is given in the case of fixed choice probability,and a multi-objective optimization algorithm based on genetic algorithm for the pricing problem is designed to obtain the Pareto optimal solution in the case of exponential choice probability.In the case of fixed choice probability,the impacts of the benchmark passenger proportion of customized bus,the utility sensitive parameters and competition intensity parameters of the two transport modes on prices and profits are studied.In the case of exponential choice probability,the Pareto frontier individual distribution and Pareto optimal prices and profits of the two transport modes are obtained,analyzed and compared.(2)A questionnaire is designed and the survey results are used to determine the time value parameters and passenger expected price parameters in the model.Based on previous research and practical observation,some reasonable assumptions are put forward.Based on the assumptions,the passenger utility functions and demand functions are defined,and a competitive pricing model is constructed under the two scenarios of “driverowned ride-sharing” and “platform-owned ride-sharing”,so as to maximize the respective benefits of customized bus and ride-sharing.By solving the model,the solution equations about the optimal price decision variables of the two transport modes are obtained.Based on numerical simulation,the impacts of headway of customized bus,time value of passengers and the proportion of platform-owned ride-sharing on the prices and profits of the two transport modes are studied.(3)Considering the centralized pricing and decentralized pricing modes of the platform,and the impact of price,waiting time and ride comfort on passenger demand,the passenger utility function is defined by time value.The collaborative pricing models under four scenarios are formulated,including driver-owned ride-sharing with centralized pricing,driver-owned ride-sharing with decentralized pricing,platform-owned ride-sharing with centralized pricing and platform-owned ride-sharing with decentralized pricing.The optimal pricing strategies under the four scenarios are proved,and the impacts of pricing methods on the optimal price,demand and profit are analyzed based on numerical experiments.The research results of this dissertation reveal some basic characteristics of the Internet travel service industry,and provide management insight for the pricing of customized bus and online ride-sharing services;In theory,from the perspective of management science,this dissertation combines game theory,simulation technology and heuristic algorithm,and puts forward the collaborative pricing scheme of customized bus and ride-sharing,which enriches the theoretical methods of urban shared transport mode.