Study Of Two-stage Container Storage Pricing Considering Liner Shipping Company

With the development of international trade,throughputs of terminals continue to climb.Due to limited space of terminals and uncertainty of customer retrieving behavior,utilization rate of terminal yard is too high.In order to relieve terminal congestion,how to use storage pricing mechanism to affect customer behavior is an urgent problem for terminal operators.In practice,terminal operators do not charge customers directly.In fact,liner shipping companies usually act as intermediary between terminals and customers.Therefore,the pricing mechanism applied between the terminal operator and the liner shipping company determines the terminal's revenue and affects operation in the terminal yard.Besides,when making pricing decisions,terminal operator should consider the competition of extermal yard.This paper studied storage pricing of imported containers based on a two-stage Stackelberg game model,which was composed of a terminal operator,a liner shipping company and a customer.In the first stage,the terminal operator decided storage price charged to liner shipping company.In the second stage,the liner shipping company decided storage price charged to the customer.Two imported container storage pricing model was established for free-time contract mechanism and free-space contract mechanism separately.In each model,container dwell time subjected to uniform or exponential distribution.Optimal decisions of liner shipping company and container terminal were derived successively.By comparing results of centralized decision-making and decentralized decision-making situation,supply chain coordination of each contract scheme is verified,and conditions for achieving supply chain coordination were obtained.Numerical study shows that,the free space contract mechanism can bring more profit for liner companies,and help terminals control space in terminal yard better.Sensitivity analysis of some parameters are also conducted.Considering customer selection behavior,this paper analyzed the role of liner companies playing in the storage pricing process of imported containers.Moreover,the free-time contract mechanism and free-space contract mechanism were compared quantitatively,which provides reference for liner companies and terminals in practice.