Marketing research of the cargo base of dry cargo area in the seaport of Taman

<p>Currently, maritime transport is one of the most popular ways of transporting goods over long distances, which leads to the importance of this service industry, for domestic and foreign trade. In this regard, the industry is gaining strategic importance to the State and decisions in this area can have serious consequences for the economy of the whole country. It is not surprising that the state has a strong interest in the development of transport capacity by building and development of sea ports.</p><p>One of the most promising projects in this area is the construction of a dry cargo area in the sea port of Taman. the implementation of which requires a careful approach to the the market analysis and forecasting of demand for transportation of various goods, taking into account their specific features, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of both the under construction port and its major competitors.</p><p>Existing theoretical literature on the subjects of the port marketing, competitiveness of ports and forecasting the demand for their services, mainly covers the allocation of the factors influencing the choice of customers and building regression models of the cargo freights volume. Nevertheless, the geographical position of Russia requires the development of traffic forecasting methods that take into account the huge size of the country and the general length of its borders.</p><p>To perform this task in the paper presents a methodology based on a multiple levels of competition. To determine the competitive opportunities of the Taman at each level of competition, the geographic segmentation model of the cargo flows was presented.</p><p>The research of the cargo base of the port resulted in the following possible cargo handling volumes in 2020:</p><p>&bull; Grain - 3.66 million tons per year</p><p>&bull; Coal - 11.1 - 12.69 million tons per year</p><p>&bull; Ore - 8 million tons per year</p><p>&bull; Metals - 10.1 million tons per year</p><p>These results allow us to conclude about the prospect of the construction of terminals for all the investigated goods, with the exception of grain, even considering current situation with Ukraine and Crimea, during which the government decided to postpone their participation in the project.</p><p>According to the results of this work it may be noted that the dry cargo area of ​​the seaport of Taman can become one of the key players in the marine cargo handling, the development of which will provide the necessary transshipment capacities for Russian producers, and, through this, will stimulate further growth of the Russian economy.</p>