Research On Market Competitiveness Of High Speed Railway In China Under Competition From Civil Aviation

With the implementation of Long and Medium Term Railway Network Plan (2008Adjusted), high speed railway skeleton in China begins to take shape. In order to tackle with competition of high speed railway, civil aviation puts forward comprehensive measures including strategies of cost, air route optimization, big customer, internet check-in, price and etc. Under such a circumstance, how to compete and cooperate with civil aviation, how to improve the high speed railway transportation product quality, what competitive strategies can be taken to advance core competence and promote management mechanism transformation, are all imperative problems of theoretical and practical implications.High speed railway differs significantly from civil aviation in distance, speed, time, price, safety, energy consumption and etc, has its comparative advantage, core competence and competitiveness. In general, high speed railway dominates the market within1000kilometers at the speed of300km/h while civil aviation’s competitive distance is over1200kilometers. There are several factors influencing consumer’s choice of civil aviation or high speed railway, by applying consumer equilibrium theory, the paper maintains that high speed railway needs to optimize its travel time, price, comfort, safety, convenience and etc. The competitiveness of high speed railway manifests through high speed railway transportation product including three layers of core function, basic characteristics and additional value, and transportation product is the foundation for market competitiveness of high speed railway. Important measures to improve market competitiveness include resource strategy, competition and cooperation strategy, product strategy, price strategy, place strategy, promotion strategy and etc, and success experiences of civil aviation and high speed railway at home and abroad provide useful references.Main conclusions are:(1) Because of different technological and economic characteristics, high speed railway and civil aviation have their comparative advantage and fundamental marketplace.(2) High speed railway transportation product serves as the foundation for market competence. By improvement of transportation product quality, market competitiveness can be improved.(3) Beside of traditional market strategies, high speed railway industry can simultaneously adopt special strategies including resource, competition and cooperation, knot, informationization and etc.(4) It’s imperative to draw lessons from the experiences at home and abroad, transform the prevailing management mechanism and get adapted to the transportation market competition.