ABSTRACT
Rail–sea combined transport, one of the key modes of multimodal transportation, has drawn increasing attention from the nation and the industry as China pays more and more attention to the development of multimodal transportation that integrates water, land, and air. The development of the Rail–Sea Express, which China Railway Group developed, is now being constrained by the insufficient amount of market positioning study. In order to segment the market, this study uses the types of goods and the provinces as segmentation variables. It then proposes the target market assessment index system for the container Rail–sea Express and develops the target market selection model for Rail–sea Express based on TOPSIS. Finally, the article undertakes an empirical research on market segmentation and market selection using the new western land-sea corridor as a representative region. In addition, 17 markets were chosen as the target markets for the Rail–sea Express out of a total of 25 market segments. All the submarkets in the high competition and high demand market are chosen. Meanwhile, part of submarkets in the high competition and low demand market is chosen. Also, part of submarkets in the low-competition and high-demand markets are chosen.
