The Two-level Game About Co-operation And Competition Between Dedicated Terminals-Shipping Companies In The Regional Port System

Under the integration of the global supply chain, it’s becoming more and more important to develop the coexistence of competition and co-operation between each regional port system. In the meantime, the development of port also leads to a more fierce competition in liner shipping market. Nowadays, with the supply of transportation capacity being far greater than its demand, many shipping companies have chosen to compete instead of to cooperate, so as to win more market shares. As the trend of ship development towards large-scale and specialization becomes increasingly apparent, shipping companies want to enhance the ability to control the terminal and hope the door-to-door transportation with harbor can be more convenient. So they become involved in terminal operation industry and tend to build a dedicated terminal in the port. Facing such a situation, it has become an important research issue for shipping companies to decide which strategy they should choose,and as to the strategy which kind of attitude should the dedicated terminal take.At present, the study of port competition and cooperation is more mainly about the port ownership structure, government policy, management system and so on, but the study from the quantitative viewpoint is much less. The article will break through the limited research in the literature which focuses on the qualitative analysis and the traditional terminal-oriented quantitative study and connect the shipping companies with the dedicated terminal operator in supply chain, so as to conduct a game research on relationship between dedicated terminals-shipping companies in regional port system based on model analysis and numerical study. The article mainly contains the follows two aspects:(1) To work out the profit of terminal operators and shipping companies by analyzing two-level co-operation and competition model in regional port system, the best reactive strategy of terminal operators and shipping companies which was about terminal operator’s price decision and shipping companies service price and quality of service;(2) By studying figures in a certain area, to analyze the effect on the profit of terminal operators and shipping companies which were brought in the process of shipping companies’ competition and cooperation. It also provided reference suggests for terminal operators and shipping companies.