Price differentiation in rail-bound hinterland traffic

In a changing environment the precise steering of capacities becomes increasingly important for railway operators. While railway operators are interested in a long-term capacity planning in order to increase planning security, the forwarders and ship-owners expect a high flexibility of the railway operator. In the sector of transport logistics, many methods of price differentiation are already common practice. The Air Cargo for example uses a successful revenue management for many years and is constantly developing it. Regarding rail freight transport, less systematic price differentiations are currently being applied. As the concept of long-term price fixing with a fixed amount of capacity is not considered to be attractive by customers, it is necessary to develop new ways of pricing. A successful pricing may have a positive impact on the company´s operating result. Furthermore, a certain differentiation of the range of services may result in a higher customer attractiveness and customer retention.

The cooperative project has the target to identify potential benefits as well as possible implementations of a price differentiation in rail freight. Therefore, the transferability of pricing strategies to the railbound hinterland traffic will be analysed and the relevant processes along the transport chain will be modelled in order to demonstrate the various options of pricing strategies.