An empirical assessment of pricing efficiency across the European rail market

Over the last decades liberalization in the European Rail market has led to a significant development of the industry, an increase in competition and an overall improvement of the service offered. In this context the implementation of dynamic pricing policies plays a crucial role. The main aim of this work is to empirically assess whether the Rail liberalization reforms in the EU have enhanced the adoption of dynamic pricing policies by the companies operating in the European Passenger Rail market. The study focuses on 14 European Rail companies. The efficiency of a dynamic pricing approach was measured through eight performance indicators built on data collected during July 2020. The impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the pricing strategies was also investigated by comparing the offers before and after the first wave of the pandemic. Companies were ranked in terms of pricing efficiency by using an outranking methodology. The results clearly show that there are front runners in terms of pricing efficiency, other companies which are midway through the journey to full efficiency and other operators still anchored to legacy fixed pricing, which have room to improve their pricing methodology.