Research On Transportation Service Procurement Based On The Combinatorial Double Auction Method

Now,more and more enterprises outsource their transportation business to professional transportation service providers,while focusing on their core business.In the process of transportation business outsourcing,enterprises need to procure transportation services from suitable carriers.So how to procure transportation service has become a problem many enterprises are facing.Scholars have applied the auction method to the transportation service procurement problem.However,the characteristics of transportation service market were not taken into consideration in the existing research.In practical application,the transportation service market has the following characteristics:First,there are multiple shippers and multiple carriers in the transportation service market.The market structure is "multiple-to-multiple" and the relation between shippers and carriers is equal.Secondly,shippers’ transportation service demands are complex in real life.For shippers,each transportation route does not exist alone.One shipper’s transportation service demand could include multiple routes at the same time,which is an inseparable combination.Finally,certain transaction cost is generated in transportation service transaction,such as labor cost,operation cost,maintenance cost.Based on the characteristics above,this paper studies the transportation service procurement problem from the perspective of combinatorial double auction.Specifically,considering that each carrier only provides a fixed route,the corresponding transportation service procurement combinatorial double auction model is proposed.The corresponding transportation service procurement combinatorial double auction mechanism is designed,namely TSPCDA mechanism.It is proved that the TSPCDA mechanism is incentive compatible for shippers.Example 1 is provided to show the operation process of TSPCDA mechanism.In example 1,each rational shipper submits the true bid.Shippers,carriers and the auction platform obtained non-negative utility.In addition,the allocation efficiency of TSPCDA mechanism maintains at a high level.Then,considering that each carrier provides a combination of routes,the extended transportation service procurement combinatorial double auction model is proposed.The extended transportation service procurement combinatorial double auction mechanism is designed,namely ETSPCDA mechanism.It is proved that the ETSPCDA mechanism is incentive compatible for shippers and carriers.Similarly,example 2 is provided to show the operation process of ETSPCDA mechanism.In example 2,each rational shipper and carrier submits the true bid.Shippers,carriers and the auction platform obtained non-negative utility.And the allocation efficiency of ETSPCDA mechanism maintains at a high level.The above findings have some management implications for the establishment of transportation service procurement auction platform in future.