An Integrated Capacity Allocation and Dynamic Pricing Model Designed for Air Cargo Transportation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Interesting and well prepared manuscript. Thank you for your contribution. Following are some of my comments/suggestions to improve the manuscript.

Page 1, line 20-22 - Incomplete sentence: "In this study CVaR and ANN for capacity allocation, regression, time series, and ANN for demand forecasting, and the SARSA algorithm for pricing."

The Introduction section is very detailed - a combination of introduction and background. While this is completely acceptable, I suggest the authors to 'identify the gap' earlier in their Introduction; may be set up the readers to the information that is about to be explained in the paper. Just a suggestion, though.

Highly appreciate the summarized review in Table 1. Good job! Similarly, Figures 1 and 2 are very helpful, too; however, I suggest increasing font sizes within the figures to improve readability, as pixels are currently distorting on magnification.

Page 7, Figure 2 does not completely visualize what is explained in lines 230-231. Capacity Allocation output is not serving as input to Dynamic Pricing, in Figure 2. Please edit as appropriate.

Page 16, lines 637-640. The authors talk about the objectives, however, the first sentence is not addressed any where in the study. Please be consistent in listing objectives and tasks, and do not introduce new terminology in the results section.

Overall comment - The manuscript has three sections - Introduction, Materials and Methods, and Results. However, I believe the readers must be given a heads up for each of these sections as they are not just those three sections. I simply suggest authors to rename their sections to 1. Introduction and Background; 2. Materials, Methods, and Models; 3. Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Or, the authors may consider splitting these sections to include more headings and reorganize the article for clarity.

Thank you!

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Well written manuscript. Please review the article for grammar, spelling, and completeness of sentences.

Author Response

We would like to express our gratitude for your invaluable contributions to our work. Responses to these comments can be found in the attached file. The edits made to the article are highlighted in green to make it easier for you to follow.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Major Comments

1. Introduction: In general, the Introduction is very wordy and repetitive. Some concepts are re-worded and presented several times. (examples: lines 32-39, 151-156, 178-182, 365-377). The reviewer recommends a heavy edit on content, aiming to reduce repetitiveness which reduces the content quality.

 

2. Section 2.3, paragraph 604-611. The results are not convincing giving the low amount of evidence provided. They could be more detailed and more comprehensive in the information presented.
   1. “For destination number four, the model's price recommendations were closest to the actual prices.” Why only for the number 4? Why only 4 destinations? Why the actual prices are not shown? By how much the other destinations are missing the actual prices?.
   2. “However, the long running time for training the model may be a problem for the real use of the model.” How long? Any way to simplify the model and have a reasonable performance with a better runtime?

 

3. Overall: Especially in the Introduction section, but in general, the text could be revised to be more concise and not excessively wordy and repetitive. The results need to be shown for a larger number of conditions (destination), as well as explaining the results presented (as mentioned in the point above).

Minor Comments and Suggestions

1. Lines 30, 31: “It is differentiated from other modes of transportation due to the speed and efficiency it provides.” Also worth mentioning access to remote places.
2. Lines 32-39: “Air cargo transportation is particularly well-suited to the transportation of high-value goods, such as vaccines, which are sensitive to temper ture and time. Additionally, air cargo is the optimal method for transporting live animalsover extended distances. In the modern era, electronic devices have become ubiquitous,with nearly every individual possessing at least one. The components of these devices are manufactured in a multitude of locations worldwide and subsequently assembled to create the finished product. The expeditious and secure consolidation of these components is made possible by the use of air cargo transportation.” In general, the idea can be better presented. The sentences are too short, fragmented and repetitive.
3. Lines 45-46: “It streamlines supply chains by providing a fast and reliable mode of transportation and supports industries with solutions for efficient transportation.” Same idea that was mentioned earlier without being called "supply chain". It is repetitive.
4. Lines 67, 162, 310: Doublespaces
5. Lines 69-74: Is there any source (citation) available for this statement?
6. Lines 117-118: Is there any source (citation) available for this statement?
7. Lines 143-145: “Our study presents an integrated model that incorporates dynamic pricing, capacity allocation, and demand forecasting as key inputs.” Worth mentioning that this is an optization problem.
8. Lines 151-156: “The determination of pricing strategies is of significant importance to businesses. Dynamic pricing represents one of the pricing strategies employed across a range of sectors, including air transportation, e-commerce, transportation, etc. The implementation of dynamic pricing enables businesses to respond expeditiously to evolving market circumstances, gain a competitive edge, and potentially boost sales by aligning their offerings with customer preferences.” This idea has been presented already and it is being rephrased. Repetitive
9. Line 177: “data-based” Suggestion: Data-driven
10. Lines 190-192: Is this backed by data or the results of this research? If yes, then it would be more appropriate to present this result in the conclusion.
11. Line 210: “a major air cargo company”. Is this dataset publicly available? Is the air cargo company mentioned elsewhere in the paper?
12. Line 223: “The solution to this problem”. Worth mentioning that this is an optimization problem.
13. Lines 229-236: Worth mentioning that this is an iterative process.
14. Lines 262- 263: “Two methods were used”. Is there a particular reason why these two models were chosen instead of others?
15. Lines 265-269: Given that the presented papers/methods are from 1996 and 2008, and considering the recent explosion of ANN networks and frameworks, is there no more recent promising method worth comparing?
16. Lines 306-312: Repetitive. Could start directly on the second paragraph since this concept has been covered in the Introduction.
17. Lines 314-316: “The inputs utilized by the demand forecasting model were determined through interviews with experts in the sector who have been employed in this field for an extended period.” Where is this data available?
18. Lines 327-329:” A taxonomy of forecasting methods can be classified into three broad categories: quantitative forecasting methods, qualitative forecasting methods, and intelligent forecasting methods.” Is there any source (citation) available for this statement?
19. Lines 339-340: “The most appropriate model for our study was ultimately determined.” Very strong statement. It may be the best result among the models tested, but it is far from being a comprehensive test of several models.
20. Lines 361-364: Worth mentioning the limited success of time series in some of the examples given (finance and economics).
21. Lines 394-396: This evaluation should include a statistical analysis of the results for some of the numerous ANN that were evaluated.
22. Line 524: “AWB”. This is not defined anywhere in the paper.
23. Lines 641-650: Repetitive and not needed in a Results Section.
24. Lines 686-698: Results from the previous chapter do not explicit results in the statements of this paragraph.
25. Lines 705-707: “To improve the performance of the model, wider ranges of hyperparameters can be used and different hyperparameter optimisation techniques, such as Bayesian optimisation, can be tried.” Comparison with other models and also different ANN architectures as well.

Author Response

We would like to express our gratitude for your invaluable contributions to our work. Responses to these comments can be found in the attached file. The edits made to the article are highlighted in green to make it easier for you to follow.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper presents an integrated capacity allocation and dynamic pricing model designed for the air cargo transportation. Some suggestions and concerns are given as follows.

1. What are the core contributions of this paper? Please summarize 2-3 main contributions at the end of the Introduction.
2. The Introduction is too long and redundant. Readers can not easily get the logic behind the content. Please shorten them and improve the logic and consistency between the paragraphs.
3. On page 12, the authors listed some paragraphs, and it seems that each paragraph is with a reference. What are the purposes of these paragraphs? More importantly, it is chaos without logic.
4. In Table 3, the authors listed the statistical comparison of demand forecasting models. Have the authors compared the proposed model with other baselines? What is the novelty of the proposed model?

Overall, I can not recommend the paper for publication in its current form.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

see above.

Author Response

We would like to express our gratitude for your invaluable contributions to our work. Responses to these comments can be found in the attached file. The edits made to the article are highlighted in green to make it easier for you to follow.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

All the major and minor comments and suggestions were adequately addressed.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have addressed my concerns, and I suggest accepting the paper for publication.