Research On The Joint Optimization Model Of Differential Pricing And Seat Allocation Of High-Speed Railway In Competitive Environment

In recent years,the scale of China’s high-speed railway network has developed rapidly.This development has met the growing demand for passenger travel to a certain extent and improved the travel efficiency of passengers.In the passenger transportation market,there are many transportation modes that passengers can choose from,and the types of passenger transportation products are becoming more and more abundant.Passengers also have more and more requirements on the products they selected This means that the high-speed railway is facing more and more competitive pressure in the passenger transport market.At present,the relatively fixed pricing mechanism of high-speed railway has been unable to meet the needs of the sustainable development of high-speed railway,which affects the increase of high-speed railway ticket revenue.The main reason is that the ticket price of high-speed railway does not match the passenger demand,reducing the competitiveness of high-speed railway in the transportation market.On the other hand,in the existing seat allocation mode,the matching degree between passenger demand and seat capacity of high-speed railway trains is relatively low,and the seat utilization of different trains is quite different,leading to the waste of seat capacity of trains.In this context,the issue of high-speed railway ticket price formulation and seat allocation has become a significant research content to optimize the utilization of high-speed railway seat capacity,guarantee ticket revenue,and improve the competitiveness of high-speed railway trains.Revenue management is a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary management technology.It subdivides the market based on demand forecast,sets the appropriate price according to the products or services of different market segments,and allocates the appropriate product quantity,so as to maximize the revenue.Two important cores of revenue management are "differential pricing" and "seat allocation".Based on the theoretical model of differential pricing and seat allocation,this paper studies the joint optimization of differential pricing and seat allocation of high-speed railway in the competitive environment,considering the passengers’ decision-making behavior in alternative passenger transport products,while the operation plan and timetable of high-speed railway trains are given.Specific research contents include:(1)This paper constructs a theoretical framework for the joint optimization of differential pricing and seat allocation of high-speed railway,determines the key contents of the problem as pricing,seat allocation,passenger selection behavior,and their interaction relationship.The key points to study the problem are: passenger selection decision-making behavior,differential pricing strategy and seat allocation strategy and joint optimization of high-speed railway differential pricing and seat allocation.(2)Refine passengers’ decision-making process in alternative passenger transport products.Based on the available data,this paper establishes the decision-making model of alternative passenger transport products from the perspective of passenger transport product attributes,determines the factors affecting the utility of passenger transport products and their weights,constructs the utility function of alternative passenger transport products,and analyzes the situation of passenger demand divert from the perspective of time and space,and determines the mathematical expression corresponding to the different situations.Through case analysis,the factors that affect the decision-making of passengers’ choice of passenger transport products are determined,which mainly include the ticket price,travel time and departure time of passenger transport products.It is proved that: the choice decision-making model established in this paper is more accurate for the prediction of passengers’ choice;ticket price and travel time play a negative role in the choice of passengers;under different travel distances,passengers pay different attention to the above three factors.The model takes competitive passenger products as a part of alternative passenger products,which can reflect the relative competitive relationship of high-speed trains.It makes the specific expression of alternative transport products’ attributes and the demand diversion under capacity restriction.(3)Based on the decision-making behavior of passengers’ choice of passenger transport products,a joint optimization model of high-speed railway single-stage differential pricing and seat allocation,and a joint optimization model of multi-stage differential pricing and seat allocation are established under the competitive environment.According to the characteristics of the models,simulated annealing algorithm is used to solve the problem.The effectiveness of the model is proved by building examples,and the impact of different demand environment and different sensitivity of passengers to ticket price on ticket revenue are analyzed.The results show that: the strategy of giving priority to the long-distance OD for allocating the seats and the strategy of single-stage differential pricing can bring higher ticket revenue.The ticket revenue of high-speed rail trains decreases with the increase of the sensitivity of passengers to ticket price.When the sensitivity of passengers to ticket price is higher,the effect of implementing differential pricing strategy to improve ticket revenue is more obvious.Take the ticket revenue when the ticket price sensitivity is low as the reference value.In the same competitive environment,if the differential pricing and seat allocation strategies in this paper are adopted,there is a threshold value of passenger sensitivity to ticket price.If the sensitivity of passenger to ticket price is higher than the threshold value,the promotion effect of this strategy on reference value will disappear.(4)In this paper,some high-speed trains of Shanghai Nanjing Intercity Railway are taken as the objects,and the intercity buses are taken as competitive passenger transport products for empirical analysis.Based on the decision-making behavior of passengers’ actual ticket purchase,set the relevant parameters,put the actual passenger travel demand into the established joint optimization model of differential pricing and seat allocation,and get the schemes under different pricing and seat allocation strategies.By comparing the different schemes with the actual ones,the pricing strategies and seat allocation strategies suitable for Shanghai Nanjing Intercity Railway case are proposed.The combination of single-stage differential pricing strategy and priority to allocate seats to long od can increase ticket revenue by 29.49%,passenger volume by 34.15% and average passenger rate by 15.06%.With 24 Figures,59 Tables and 123 Reference Literatures.