Pricing and slot allocation for long-term customers of shipping transportation services

For a shipping company, it is important to price and allocate slots for long-term customers as they account for a large percentage of its transportation business. In this paper, a segmented pricing and slot allocation strategy is proposed. First, the long-term customers and their cargos are segmented due to their historical transportation business records and their properties. Then based on the segmentation, definitions of standard service and optional service are proposed and models relative to these two conceptions are built, respectively. Sequently, different pricing and slot allocation strategies are presented by simulating uncertain aspects. At last guidelines for shipping companies to make proper decisions are given by analyzing the experiment results.