Investigating and Identifying the Factors Affecting Freight Pricing in The Multimodal Transportation Market in Mena Region: A Qualitative Research

Proper pricing of products and services is one of the most important initiatives of any business, which is more complicated in multimodal transport companies due to their special nature. Faced with the complexities of pricing issues, most of the time managers' decisions are influenced by emotions because there is no accurate information to make a decision or this information is not available to senior managers. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to identify the effective components of pricing of freight transportation services, as the most important part of the multidimensional transportation marketing mix. As a result, qualitative and applied research was defined to identify these components and indexes. By studying previous research, a qualitative Delphi questionnaire consisting of 8 factors and 64 indexes was prepared and sent to 15 senior managers of multimodal transport companies in the Middle East and North Africa region. After 3 rounds of the Delphi questionnaire consensus between expert panel members has been achieved. Adopting a theoretical framework according to result analysis showed that, at the both firm levels and at the macro level, all identified components were effective, but 10 of the identified indexes were removed and 5 new indexes were added by the panel members. As a result of the expert panel consensus, a conceptual model for the pricing of multimodal freight services in the Middle East and North Africa region was proposed.