Research on the slot allocation of container liner under E-commerce environment

Abstract

The optimization of slot allocation of container liner is directly related to the benefits of liner company. Generally, there are two kinds of customers in the liner company, contract customers and scattered customers. With the development of e-commerce, more and more scattered customers choose online booking, the predictability and stability of booking slot get improved. This paper describes expected marginal revenue and reserved slots of scattered customers under the e-commerce environment and traditional environment respectively at first. Then, builds a model to maximize the revenue of liner company in the voyage, considering the transportation of empty container and next takes a fixed route of a liner company as an example to testify the model. Finally, according to the result, it comes to the conclusion that the e-commerce has good predicting effect and the total revenue of liner company under the e-commerce environment is greater than under the traditional environment. With the further development of e-commerce, the scattered customer under the e-commerce will replace the contract customer gradually.