Situational Analysis of the Cargo Transportation Market and Prospects for Its Development

Abstract

The relevance of conducting a situational analysis of the cargo transportation market is based on its overall strategic importance in the context of economic development of the Russian Federation. Namely, being actively involved in both domestic and foreign economic activity, cargo transportation is a key one in the supply of goods, resources, food, and other cargo.Such an analysis is of particular interest regarding the immediate pandemic and consequent period. It offers an opportunity to draw certain conclusions on change in quantitative indices (the total number of cargo transportation carried out decreased that somewhat complicated the situation of a number of business entities) as well as, to a certain extent, on adaptation of the tools of situational analysis to situations rather strongly influenced by unusual factors.The subject of study described in the article is the process of conducting a situational analysis of the cargo transportation market to identify the main patterns for road, rail, and sea transportation. Besides, the data obtained through the analysis are the basis for making basic forecasts for the future state of the entire cargo transportation sector.The study involved in its context methods of analysis and synthesis of economic and statistical sources of information; at the same time, the author relied also on several empirical research methods and a SWOT analysis.The results of the current study are ambiguous: on the one hand, one can observe overall development of the industry from the position of changing the structure composition of the market of cargo transportation, as well as note its sustainability relative to other areas. At the same time, the analysis of the state of cargo transportation that took shape during the pandemics can be considered as dependent to great extent on further impact of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the entire economy. It is nevertheless important that the cargo transportation has shown high adaptation ability regarding tuning of the activity under the conditions of fast changes in external economic environment and market situation.