Pricing scheme of ocean carrier for inbound container storage for assistance of container supply chain finance (Q2320697)

Summary: The aim of this paper is to investigate the pricing scheme of ocean carrier for inbound container storage so as to assist container supply chain finance. In this paper, how an ocean carrier should set price of inbound container storage to the customer while facing the contract from the container terminal operator is first analyzed. Then, two different contract systems, the free-time contract system which is widely used in practice and the free-space contract system which is newly developed recently, are considered. In the two different contract systems, inbound container storage pricing models are constructed, and accordingly optimal solution approaches for the ocean carrier are provided. For comparison purpose, some numerical experiments for the two different contract systems are conducted to investigate the effects of the container terminal operator's decision on the system outcomes. Numerical experiments show that (1) the carrier is more flexible in the free-space contract system and can receive more profit by using the free-storage-space as a pooling storage system and (2) the free-space contract system benefits both the carrier in profit and the busy terminal in traffic control.