Sales strategy selection for liner companies under shipping e-commerce considering canvassing ability competition
研究了班轮公司在传统无船承运人渠道和新增航运电商渠道下的最优销售策略选择，分析了揽货能力、超售行为、需求波动和船舶容量对利润的影响，为集装箱舱位销售提供理论指导。
• Analyze optimal sales strategy selection in liner shipping e-commerce. • Model a traditional non-vessel operating common carrier (NVOCC) channel. • Model a dual channel with both e-commerce and NVOCC channels. • Examine canvassing ability, overselling behavior, demand fluctuation and vessel capacity. The rapid growth of e-commerce applications has promoted the establishment of shipping e-commerce channels by many liner companies in addition to their existing traditional Non-vessel operating common carrier (NVOCC) channel. Unlike NVOCC channels, shipping e-commerce channels guarantee shippers the availability of contracted container slots. However, some problems arise, including the competition with NVOCC channels, shipping slot sales’ risk, and the increasing liner companies’ costs. Therefore, this paper addresses optimal sales strategy selection in the liner transportation industry, including a single traditional NVOCC channel (TN) strategy, and a dual channel with both e-commerce and NVOCC channels (EN) strategy. Two contract scheme models are constructed considering the channel competition on canvassing ability, overselling behavior, demand fluctuation, and the limited liner vessel capacity. Findings show that the impact of overselling behavior on the profit under the EN and TN is not always negative, which is related to the shipping capacity and probability of the high canvassing ability. Comparative analyses reveal that the EN is dominant if the unit overselling compensation cost varies small. Meanwhile, the TN is profitable if the unit overselling compensation cost increases and the canvassing cost of e-commerce channel exceeds a certain value. Otherwise, the selection of sales strategy relies on the arrival rate, the canvassing cost of the e-commerce channel and shipping capacity. The results offer new insights to both theoretical research on container slot sales and the practical selection of sales strategy since shipping e-commerce has changed the slot selling mode in the container shipping industry, which could also enhance the competitiveness of liner companies in the container shipping industry.