Timing is everything. There are ideal times for essentially in everything we do. Every day we face questions of timing, but we have limited guiding principles to answer those questions. There is a science behind ‘when we buy’ and the advance ticket sales market provides a ripe laboratory for research. Consumer’s deal with myriads of uncertainty finding the ideal time to book that vacation they have been long time waiting for. Prices change daily based on real time demand and the information asymmetry between buyers and sellers further complicates this problem for consumers as decisional agents. Given this emerging research opportunity, this dissertation conducts a series of experimental studies to examine the underlying process consumers undergo when booking and purchasing sporting event tickets. Study 1 begins exploring two key decisional factors (sellout risk and opportunity cost) consumers use to guide their temporal choice under uncertainty. A selective attention bias was elicited where sport fans and casual consumers placed subjective weighted values on these uncertainty cues. Study 2 further examines distinct biases in temporal choice due to emotion and motivation of consumers. The study found that consumers with higher involvement led to the belief to find better priced deal in the future which was mediated by their overconfidence. Lastly, Study 3 examines the boundary conditions and tests how the information frame and structure of the environment can further influence consumer’s booking and purchase decision. The empirical findings from the dissertation highlight the importance of consumer’s decisional biases in inter-temporal choice and provides theoretical and practical implications for both marketing and pricing research. Unlike normative assumptions of rationality, the studies find that there is no one size fit all optimal decision model on whether to wait or purchase. The optimization strategy of temporal choice ultimately lies within the interaction between the individual and how they cope with uncertainty cues in their surrounding purchase environment. / Tourism and Sport

Africa has a high rate of revenue under-collection in public water utility companies. This rate currently averages 20-50%, and the rate is 18% for Malawi alone. The purpose of this single-case study was to explore credible business strategies senior managers of water utilities use to address inefficiencies in collecting water fee revenues. The conceptual framework for this study was revenue management, which includes strategic constructs for increasing amounts of revenue collection. The target population for this study was 5 senior managers of a public water utility in Malawi, which is located in the southeastern part of Africa. Data collection included semistructured, face-to-face interviews and a review of company documents. The data analysis process involved the use of thematic analysis, including methodological triangulation, to identify 4 themes: innovative strategies, effective metering and billing, customer relationship management, and disconnection of water supply from customers with overdue bills. These themes highlighted credible business strategies that, for these 5 senior managers, were effective in revenue collection. Addressing inefficiencies in collecting water fee revenues will facilitate positive social change by increasing profits, growing the water business, reducing the crime rate by employing more people, providing potable water to reduce waterborne diseases, and contributing to the sustainable social and economic development of the people of Malawi.

In the restaurant industry, some patrons do not honor their reservations, especially on holidays. Grounded in postpositivism and system theories, the purpose of this comparative study was to examine the impact of implementing a credit card payment policy for fine dining restaurants reservations and no shows after implementation of a credit card guarantee policy at a high-end hotel located in the southeast United States. Data were collected from archival records provided by the hotel executives. According to the results of a Wilcoxon Signed Rank test, there was a statistically significant decrease in the number of no shows, p < .001, after the implementation of the credit card guarantee policy. In a paired sample t-test, there was a statistically significant decrease in the number of reservations, p < .001, after implementation of the credit card guarantee policy. The implications for positive social change include the potential to increase understanding of payment policies as they relate to the restaurant industry. Service industry managers can benefit from implementing payment policies that can vary from specific dates, seasons, and type of services. Customers will also benefit by being able to make reservations not originally possible due to demand. The current study adds to service industry knowledge, increasing the understanding of payment policies as they relate to restaurant industry. Conducting a similar study in other service industries in the future may lead to a better understanding of the nature of policies and customers' traits and behaviors.

After the complete liberalization of the airline industry during the 1990s the industry has faced a rapid growth in passenger numbers. This has mainly been caused by the emergence of so-called Low Cost Carrier (LCC) that offer a simplified product (i.e. point-to-point flights without any frills) at a lower cost than traditional Network Carriers. Furthermore LCC also introduced a less differentiated pricing structure (Restriction Free Pricing) which forced competing network carriers to reduce the degree of price discrimination which they were able to practice until then in order to defend their market shares. This has led to a decrease of average yields, which resulted in difficulties for (smaller) Network Carriers to cover their fixed costs, related to the operation of a hub & spoke network. In this environment network airlines are looking for new revenue sources as well as further sources of cost reduction. This development has amplified the consolidation trend of the airline industry and led to the emergence of several multi-hub networks (e.g. Lufthansa runs hub-operation in Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich and Vienna). One way to leverage the fact that multi-hub networks allow several routings for one origin-destination city pair would be the introduction of flexible tickets, where the actual routing of the passenger is not defined at the moment of purchase but only a certain time prior to departure. This allows airlines to raise the load factor on their network by increasing the degree of overbooking which they currently practice by pooling the risk that more passengers arrive than there is capacity among several flights. Furthermore these tickets might allow network carriers to compete in the low-cost-airline segment without having to further reduce the price level of their regular product (with specified routing). The present dissertation examined possible designs of such a ticket and their impact on the acceptance by passengers by means of a choice based conjoint study among 356 travelers. The findings suggest that while 77.5% of leisure travelers are willing to accept flexible time-range tickets in their relevant set, only 56% of business travelers are considering using this kind of ticket. More particular the results also showed that business travelers are not willing to compromise on travel duration and departure times, and are subsequently willing to pay a premium for specified tickets. A market share simulation showed that depending on the selected product layout flexible time-range tickets are able to gain up to 60% market share when offered at a discount of up to 33% relative to traditional tickets. When it comes to the actual layout, the largest lever to increase the acceptance is to exclude connection flights from the potential set of flights. The results contribute to the young research area on flexible products by assessing the disutility which is experienced by customers with regard to particular product characteristics of flexible products. Furthermore the results aim at providing airline managers with a comprehensive overview of the possibilities which flexible time-range tickets bring along when it comes to increasing the load factor and thereby the revenues in a multi-hub network. (author's abstract)

Revenue Management (RM) has become one of the most successful application areas of Operation Research. What started off as an obscure practice among few airlines in U.S in early seventies, has attained the status of mainstream business practice, thanks to the major success enjoyed by companies applying RM. Over the same period, academic and industrial research on the methodology of RM has also grown rapidly. Despite the vast technical literature on the subject of revenue management, relatively few papers explicitly model the customer’s choice behavior. Such a behavior of customers could have major impact on revenue realized by an organization. Motivated by this, we focus on addressing the problem faced by a seller who serves customers exhibiting buy-down behavior. We address two important problems faced by a seller with few perishable goods. His objective is to obtain maximum revenue possible by sales of his perishable goods. The seller now potentially faces the problem of fixing the price of the products and then control the availability of products so as to maximize his revenue by minimizing the number of customers who buy-down. The first problem is the multi-product pricing problem where we consider a monop- olistic market situation in which a seller has some quantities of perishable goods under his disposal. The seller has the option of adding few additional features to the base product(perishable good) and thereby differentiating the products to cater to different market segments. Adding each additional feature involves certain cost and there are no restrictions on the availability of the features except that a feature can be added to the base product atmost once . The customers are price-sensitive and the seller is aware of the price-demand relationship of the various customer segments. A customer looking for a product buys the product if and only if the price is less than his reservation price. The sellers’ problem is to identify the price and bundling of features for the various customer segments so as to generate maximum possible revenue. We develop a Mixed integer non-linear mathematical programming model for the problem. We then split the problem into pricing problem and bundling problem and solve them sequentially. We finally provide a numeric example to illustrate the solution procedure. Once the prices are fixed, the next problem is to control the availability of products so as to prevent the buy-down behavior of the customers. We deal with the situation of a seller with two substitutable products. The price of both products are fixed over entire selling period. In a traditional control mechanism structure if the sequence of arrival of customers are known, then it becomes trivial to solve the problem of setting control limits which would prevent buy-down behavior. But in reality it never happens that the seller knows the arrival sequence. Hence in this study to isolate the effect of arrival sequence from other complexities like demand variability, we assume a deterministic demand for both the products but the arrival sequence is randomized. We initially analyze the above described problem and develop a static control mech- anism. We show that the static control mechanism is asymptotically equivalent to the traditional selling mechanism. Then we move on to make modification in the static con- trol mechanism and make it a dynamic control mechanism such that it will respond to the buy-down customers. In order to analyze the performance of dynamic control mechanism, we build a simulation model that would compare traditional selling mechanism and dynamic control mechanism. Statistical analysis is then done on the simulation results. It is shown that for all values of buy-down proportion, on an average the dynamic control mechanism outperforms the traditional control mechanism. Further there is a trend in revenues generated depending upon the buy-down proportion which is also explained. The chapter concludes with operating guidelines for better revenue realization. The organization of the thesis is as follows. In chapter 2, we present the literature survey. We start off with the history of RM and proceed to discuss the inventory control problems in RM in detail. Then we discuss literatures dealing with customer choice behavior. In chapter 3, we define and model the multi - product pricing problem. We present a mixed integer non-linear mathematical program to model the pricing problem. The solution to this problem is divided into two sub problems - the pricing problem and the bundling problem. Solution methodologies for both sub - problem are given and the chapter concludes with a numerical illustration for a 3 - product pricing problem. In chapter 4, we define and address the inventory control problem for a two product case when customers exhibit buy-down nature. We develop a static control mechanism and study its properties. Then we move on to the dynamic control mechanism which would suit real - world conditions. Finally we study the quality of developed methodology using statistical testing methods.

Customer retention has been shown by academic researchers to be more profitable than customer acquisition. However, its implementation in the business environment has not been so successful. One of the reasons for this is that customer retention can be achieved in several ways (e.g.. loyalty programs, affinity cards and switching costs)and that the translation from the concept of “retaining customers” to the actions and strategies to retain them is not always easy. One of the most attractive strategies to ensure that customers remains within the organisation is through cross-selling and up-selling. In short, the objective is to increase the number (or the value) of the products that a customer buys from a company to make it more difficult for him/her to leave. Whilst academic research has deeply investigated the concepts of loyalty, retention programs and trust, amongst others, cross-selling has not received the same level of attention. Moreover, existing research on cross-selling has been focused on products rather than on services. Finally, this research has mostly been conceptual in nature, with limited attempts to model or design practical cross-selling and up-selling strategies. In order for cross selling and up-selling to be effective strategies, they need to be tailored to the needs of the customer. The offer must be adequate in terms of the target (who is going to buy the product), the content (what is going to be purchased) and a time (when is the right moment to offer the new product). This thesis investigates cross-selling and up-selling from a practical point of view in Nedbank It assesses the importance of the concepts of customer retention and cross-selling and up-selling through several interviews conducted within Nedbank. Finally, this research highlights, from an empirical analysis, how repurchase decision is highly influenced by the length of the relationship with the provider and the type of products already purchased. Understanding these factors is key to successfully retaining customers via cross selling. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.

Zugl.: Diss. University Duisburg-Essen, 2007.

The aim of the diploma thesis is to suggest to the management of the newly opened hotel Boby centrum an HR plan of needs of the employees and plan of personnel activities all based on available information and processed analyzes. Partial aim is to propose measures of strategic management of the demand for hotel Boby centrum´s services. There is used available internal work studies and at the same time a quantitative survey to determine the current staffing situation at hotel Boby centrum. There is suggested an increase of employees in the sector front office, housekeeping and catering department due to staffing shortages and positive need for employees. A framework for personnel activities includes recommendations of making an inventory of work positions and related work activities, establishment of a joint enterprise system and regular meetings of staff, developing of training and evaluation system according to established norms and operational objectives and mainly adherence to the statutory working hours and paid leave of employees. After confirming of the trend of seasonality in the hotel environment, it is possible to stimulate demand by using of revenue / yield management technique which is specifically clear segmentation of hotel customers and adapting the marketing mix for their needs, flexible pricing policy and maximum capacity utilization of hotel Boby centrum according to established standards.

The aim of this diploma thesis is a marketing study of a selected subject. Selected subject is Availpro company, which is focusing on developing and selling software solutions that are facilitating the work of hotel´s management. The main study goal is to provide suggestion that could enhance and improve the Availpro marketing processes. The study is divided into two parts. The first part is the analysis of theoretical information. This information was taken from literature and serves as a necessary foundation to understand the discussed issues. This thesis describes various marketing processes, activities and tools that are nowadays essential for any kind of business. The second part of the study is based on analysis of primary and secondary data. Primary data were obtained from a marketing survey, which aimed at customer satisfaction with Availpro products and services. Secondary data were obtained from internal resources and also from communication with representatives of marketing department. The results from mentioned analysis allowed to formulate some suggestions and recommendation that should lead to improvement of Availpro marketing activities.

Rural Internet connectivity projects aimed at bridging the digital divide have mushroomed across many developing countries. Most of the projects are deployed as community centred projects. In most of the cases the initial deployment of these projects is funded by governments, multilateral institutions and non-governmental organizations. After the initial deployment, financial sustainability remains one of the greatest challenges facing these projects. In the light of this, externally funded ICT4D interventions should just be used for “bootstrapping” purposes. The communities should be “groomed” to take care of and sustain these projects, eliminating as soon as possible a dependency on external funding. This master thesis presents the design and the implementation of a generic architecture for the management of the costs associated with running a computer network connected to the Internet, The proposed system, called the Network Revenue Management System, enables a network to generate revenue, by charging users for the utilization of network resources. The novelty of the system resides in its flexibility and adaptability, which allow the exploration of both conventional and non-conventional billing options, via the use of suitable ‘adapters’. The final goal of the exploration made possible by this system is the establishment of what is regarded as equitable charging in rural, marginalized communities - such as the community in Dwesa, South Africa.