Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The voluntary turnover of revenue management analysts in the U.S. airline industry is an issue, compelling revenue management leaders to implement retention strategies that successfully reduce employee turnover. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore strategies revenue management leaders used within the last 15 years to retain revenue management analysts. The conceptual framework that grounded this study was Maertz's 8 motivational forces of job attachment and voluntary turnover. The targeted population was comprised of revenue management leaders at an airline in Dallas, Texas who had demonstrated successful strategies to reduce employee turnover. Using criterion-based sampling, 4 revenue management leaders were selected for study participation. Data were collected through face-to-face semistructured interviews and company documents, then analyzed via Yin's 5-step process of compiling, disassembling, reassembling, interpreting, and concluding. Interpretations were then subjected to member checking and methodological triangulation to strengthen the trustworthiness of findings. Two main themes emerged: leadership influence and analyst career environment. The findings provide a better understanding of revenue management analyst retention and increase knowledge of factors that influenced turnover in the U.S. airline industry. With this knowledge, revenue management leaders can implement retention strategies that have successfully reduced employee turnover. The implications for positive social change include the potential to overcome emotional discomforts about work or psychological obligations to leave, which can encourage job satisfaction and improve employee retention.

Desde hace dos décadas, varias organizaciones de renombre internacional se han visto involucradas en fraudes financieros, lo que ha perjudicado su imagen y ha dejado en evidencia posibles deficiencias de supervisión por parte del equipo de auditoría interna. Asimismo, estos actos reflejan la falta de ética en la toma de decisiones por parte de los directivos. El presente trabajo de investigación tiene como principal objetivo analizar los modelos que ayudan a medir la discrecionalidad directiva en las empresas corporativas. En tal sentido, se ha planteado la siguiente interrogante: ¿cómo se puede medir la discrecionalidad directiva en las empresas corporativas? Para resolver esta interrogante, se ha revisado diversos estudios relacionados al respecto. Asimismo, se han definido algunos conceptos desarrollados por diversos autores relacionados con la discrecionalidad directiva y el problema de agencia. Así, en este trabajo se han revisado diversas posturas de investigadores sobre los modelos que miden las prácticas discrecionales y, de igual forma, se han revisado los resultados de estudios empíricos con el propósito de analizar la efectividad en la medición de la discrecionalidad directiva. Tomando en cuenta los modelos usados por los autores para la aplicación de sus muestras, se puede concluir que el método más común para medir la discrecionalidad y minimizar el riesgo de manipulación de resultados son los ajustes por devengo. Si bien existen varios modelos de medición, muchos autores coinciden en que uno de los más utilizados es el modelo de Jones; por ello, en esta investigación, se analiza tanto la versión original como la versión modificada. / Over the past two decades, several internationally renowned organizations have been involved in financial fraud, damaging their image and exposing potential oversight deficiencies by the internal audit team. Likewise, these acts reflect the lack of ethics in decision-making by managers. The main objective of this research work is to analyze the models that help to measure managerial discretion in corporate companies. In this sense, the following question has been raised: how can managerial discretion be measured in corporate companies? To resolve this question, various related studies have been reviewed in this regard. Likewise, some concepts developed by various authors related to managerial discretion and the agency problem have been defined. Thus, in this work, various positions of researchers on the models that measure discretionary practices have been reviewed and, in the same way, the results of empirical studies have been reviewed with the purpose of analyzing the effectiveness in the measurement of managerial discretion. Taking into account the models used by the authors for the application of their samples, it can be concluded that the most common method to measure discretion and minimize the risk of manipulation of results are accrual adjustments. Although there are several measurement models, many authors agree that one of the most used is the Jones model; Therefore, in this research, both the original version and the modified version are analyzed. / Trabajo de Suficiencia Profesional

Several exact and approximate dynamic programming formulations have already been proposed to solve hotel revenue management (RM) problems. To obtain tractable solutions, these methods are often bound by simplifying assumptions which prevent their application on large and dynamic complex systems. This dissertation introduces HotelSimu, a flexible simulation-based optimization approach for hotel RM, and investigates possible approaches to increase the efficiency of black-box optimization methods in the presence of noise. In fact, HotelSimu employs black-box optimization and stochastic simulation to find the dynamic pricing policy which is expected to maximize the revenue of a given hotel in a certain period of time. However, the simulation output is noisy and different solutions should be compared in a statistically significant manner. Various black-box heuristics based on variations of random local search are investigated and integrated with statistical analysis techniques in order to manage efficiently the optimization budget.

Le football professionnel est devenu une industrie du spectacle audiovisuel dont il tire une partie importante de ses revenus. Cependant, les recettes dites Matchday et les revenus annexes de la billetterie constituent un gisement de croissance important pour les clubs français. Ceux ci devraient pouvoir maitriser les capacités offertes au public du spectacle vivant dans les stades et devenir propriétaires de leurs enceintes en utilisant la technique des baux emphytéotiques. Les politiques de prix variables ou de prix dynamiques conduites dans d’autres secteurs comme les transports, l’hôtellerie ou les centres de loisir sont applicables dans la gestion de la billetterie. La digitalisation de l’offre ouvre de nouvelles perspectives de relation client. Elle améliore la traçabilité des consommateurs et permet de déterminer leur propension optimale à payer. Les solutions de CRM, Customer Relationship Management améliorent la connaissance client et permettent de mieux segmenter l’offre pour mieux adresser les différents publics du stade. Dans une activité fondée sur l’incertitude du résultat mais sur la certitude des coûts de production, les ressources digitales permettent de fidéliser les différentes catégories de fans et d’augmenter le panier moyen. Les clubs français très engagés dans la gestion à court terme ont négligé les outils du pricing et tardent à adopter les solutions digitales qui ont donné des résultats satisfaisants dans des secteurs comparables. Nous formulons des propositions adossées à des expérimentations concrètes pour augmenter les performances de la billetterie dans le secteur de l’industrie du football en France. / Football has become a major industry of entertainment for TV networks and also for companies running football squads. TV rights represent at least 50% of the French clubs incomes. Meanwhile, most of them have disregarded Matchday revenues. For a large majority of them, they don’t own their arenas. Moreover, they play in (too) large stadiums with overcapacities according to average attendances. This is why average prices are below the European average price when we compare French League One with the other major’s championships in Europe. In this field, we suggest long-term leases between public owners and football firms in order to transfer both property and ability to refit arenas and stadiums. In addition, French firms running football clubs have not yet fully used technics of variable prices and dynamic prices. They should also display CRM resources in order to address each segment of costumers, including fans, year ticket holders, walk in customer or families. The target is to hit as close as possible the willingness to pay of each category of customers. We have experienced such policies for Year ticket holders in French third division. Digital resources increase customer insights and sustain cross selling policies increasing revenues as it is done in other comparable sectors such as air transportation, leisure parks, hotels and resorts. We make some suggestions and recommendations to strengthen home revenues in the French professional football League.

Ett affärskoncept har tagits fram och resulterat i en marknadsplats. Marknadsplatsen är en webbsida och mobil applikation vars syfte är att skapa värde av resursers bokningsbara tider som idag har generellt låg beläggning hos aktivitetsanläggningar inom sport, kultur och nöje. Marknadsplatsen är tänkt att samla ett brett utbud av lågbeläggningstider inom olika aktivitetstyper som är typiska vardagsaktiviteter som vänner gör tillsammans. Tanken är att bygga ett starkt varumärke för marknadsplatsen med det tydliga budskapet att "marknadsplatsen tillhandahåller ett brett utbud av prisvärda erbjudanden inom sport- och nöjesaktiviteter, om du väljer att anpassa ditt schema utifrån anläggningarnas lågbeläggningstider". Dessutom är det tänkt att marknadsplatsen ska ha funktionalitet som gör det enklare för användare att boka en tid via marknadsplatsen, genom att synkronisera de olika alternativ av aktiviteter och tider som personer inom en grupp av vänner är intresserade av. Marknadsplatsen är tänkt att riktas till målgrupper med personer som har flexibla scheman, framförallt egenföretagare, studenter och pensionärer. Det finns en god potential för en tredjepart att driva en marknadsplats som specialiserar sig på att skapa värde av lågbeläggningstider. Affärskonceptet hindrar inte anläggningarna från att själva göra ansträngningar för att höja beläggningen på dessa tider, och de kan använda marknadsplatsen som komplement till deras befintliga bokningssystem. Utifrån de anläggningar som har undersökts finns det en god potential för att öka en anläggnings omsättning med ungefär 330 000 kr per år. Affärskonceptet har tagits fram genom att göra en marknadsundersökning baserad på en teknisk produkt som initialt var utformad som ett bokningssystem med olika produktutvecklingsmöjligheter och olika tänkbara kundgrupper att adressera. Marknadsundersökningen gjordes iterativt utifrån projektledningsmetoden Lean Startup som kombinerats med kvalitativa marknadsundersökningstekniker från Innovation Games. / A business concept has been developed into a marketplace. The marketplace is a web and mobile application whose purpose is to create value out of resources' bookable time slots which today generally have low occupation rates at activity facilities within sports, culture and entertainment. The marketplace is intended to bring together a wide range of low occupation rate time slots for different activity types, with types of activities that friends typically do together an ordinary day. The idea is to build a strong brand for the marketplace with the clear message that "the marketplace provides a wide range of affordable offerings for sports and spare time activities, if you choose to adjust your schedule to fit the facilities' low occupation rate time slots". In addition, the marketplace should have functionality that makes it easier for end-users to find a time slot through the marketplace that fits everyone, by synchronizing the various options of activities and time slots preferences that people within a group of friends are interested in. The marketplace is supposed to be targeted to people with flexible schedules, especially self-employed, students and seniors. There is a good potential for a third party to run such a marketplace and specialize in creating value out of low occupation rate time slots. However, the business concept does not prevent the facilities themselves to make efforts which lead to increased occupation rates at time slots with low occupation rates. Furthermore, the facilities are rather supposed to use the marketplace as a complement to their existing booking systems. Based on the examined activity facilities, there is a good potential to increase a facility's turnover with approximately 330 000 SEK yearly. The business concept has been developed by doing a market research based on a technical product which initially was designed as a booking system with different product development opportunities and various potential customer segments to address. The market research was done iteratively by using the project management methodology Lean Startup combined with qualitative market research techniques from Innovation Games.

The understanding of what motivates a customer to pay more for a product or service has al-ways been a fundamental question in business. To the end of answering this question, revenue management is a business practice that revolves around using analytics to predict consumer behavior and willingness-to-pay. It has been a common practice within the commercial airline and hospitality industries for over 30 years, allowing adopters to reach their service capacity with increased profit margins. In this thesis, we investigated the possibility to apply revenue management to the last mile delivery industry, an industry that provides the service of delivering goods from e-commerce companies to the consumer’s front door. To achieve this objective, a revenue management framework was conceived, detailing the interaction between the customer and a dynamic pricing model. The model itself was a product of a machine learning model, intended to segment the customers and predict the willingness-to-pay of each customer segment. The performance of this model was tested through a quantitative study on synthetic buyers, subject to parameters that influence their willingness-to-pay. It was observed that the model was able to distinguish between different types of customers, yielding a pricing policy that increased profits by 7.5% in comparison to fixed price policies. It was concluded that several factors may impact the customer’s willingness-to-pay within the last mile delivery industry. Amongst these, the convenience that the service provides and the disparity between the price of the product and the price of the service were the most notable. However, the magnitude of considering these parameters was never determined. Finally, em-ploying dynamic pricing has the potential to increase the availability of the service, enabling a wider audience to afford the service. / Vad som motiverar en kund att betala mer för en tjänst eller en produkt har länge varit ett centralt koncept inom affärslivet. Intäktsoptimering är en affärspraxis som strävar efter att besvara den frågan, genom att med analytiska verktyg mäta och förutse betalningsviljan hos kunden. Intäktsoptimering har länge varit framträdande inom flyg- och hotellbranschen, där företag som anammat strategin har möjlighets att öka försäljningsvinsten. I detta examensarbete undersöker vi möjligheten att applicera intäktsoptimering på sista milen industrin, en industri som leverar köpta produkten hem till kunden. För att uppnå detta har vi tagit fram ett ramverk för informationsflöden inom intäktsoptimering som beskriver hur kunder interagerar med en dynamisk prissättningsmodell. Denna prissättningsmodell framställs genom maskininlärning med avsikt att segmentera kundbasen, för att sedan förutse betalningsviljan hos varje kundsegment. Modellens prestanda mättes genom en kvantitativ studie på syntetiska kunder som beskrivs av parametrar som påverkar betalningsviljan. Studien påvisade att modellen kunde skilja på betalningsviljan hos olika kunder och resulterade i en genomsnittlig vinstökning på 7.5% i jämförelse med statiska prissättningsmodeller. Det finns mänga olika faktorer som spelar in på kundens betalningsvilja inom sista milen industrin. Bekvämlighet och skillnader i priset på produkten som levereras och tjänsten att leverera produkten är två anmärkningsvärda faktorer. Hur stor inverkan faktorerna som beskrivs i detta examensarbete, har på betalningsviljan, förblev obesvarat. Slutligen uppmärksammades möjligheten att, med hjälp av dynamisk prissättning, öka tillgängligheten av tjänsten då flera kunder kan ha råd med en prissättning som överväger deras betalningsvilja.

Revenue Management (RM) is the practice of managing perishable assets by control-ling their availability and/or prices with an objective to maximize the total revenue. Seat inventory allocation falls in the purview of quantity-based RM. The liberalization of the aviation sector and the subsequent entrance of the low-cost carriers saw an ever-increasing customer base for the airline industry. Given the large number of buyers, firms were free to decide the price at which they would sell tickets. The low-cost carriers started to follow a third degree price discrimination and segmentation of the market, charging a higher price to the market with a relatively inelastic demand. Although a lot of work has been done in the area of seat inventory allocation under a monopolistic market scenario, we realized that not a lot of work had been done in a competitive market scenario. This thesis considers the problem of seat inventory allocation and pricing in a duopoly where each of the competing airlines have two fare-classes. We consider the possibility that the same fare-class may be priced differently by the two competing airlines and allow for the over flow of passengers between the airlines in the same fare-class. In the first part of our work, we develop a non-linear mathematical model for setting the booking limits for one of the two competing air-lines such that the revenue earned is maximized. We consider over flow of passengers from one airline to another in the same fare-class in response to a price differential and compare the results obtained from our model with the standard Expected Marginal Seat Revenue (EMSR) model under a monopolistic scenario. The results show that our model gives higher revenues than that obtained from the EMSR model. In the second part of our work, we consider a non-cooperative game between two competing airlines with price cutting as the strategy to increase their demand. Through numerical computations, we identify the pure strategy Nash equilibrium. From the results, we conclude that Nash equilibrium is achieved only when both the airlines follow the same pricing strategy indicating that individual price cutting will not be beneficial. This also indicates that unless the competitors enter into a cooperative coalition with each other, they would not benefit from deep discount offers. In the third and final part, we prove theoretically the existence of pure strategy Nash equilibrium in a two airline, two fare-class problem with price sensitive over flow of customers in the same fare-class that was computationally analysed earlier. The strategy / strategies at which Nash equilibrium is achieved are identified. We show that Nash equilibrium is only achieved when both the airlines price identically. Hence, our thesis concludes that differential pricing does not hold any significance for the competing airlines from an operational perspective.

This thesis explores the potential use and implementation of a revenuemanagement model for coworking operators. With a critical realism philosophyand abductive approach, a quantitative study using primary data from a coworkingoperator has been conducted. Based on a comprehensive literature review, wehave found that much research is done on revenue management in the airline andhotel industries. However, we found no research on revenue management modelsthat intend to optimize revenue for coworking operations. Hence, this thesis aimsto fill this gap in existing academic research. Features from revenue managementmodels used in the hotel and airline industries are identified and analyzed with theobjective of implementing these in the coworking industry to efficiently maximizerevenue. The paper proposes the use of multinomial logit (MNL) model in theprocess of market segmentation; this method allows one to determine whichfactors influence the different segments. Moreover, the MNL model is used todefine the demand function from which a probability (probable?) distributionof total demand can be separated into demands representing each product class.Furthermore, the demand is used to calculate protection limits according to theExpected Marginal Seat Revenue (EMSR) model, with the objective of allocatingcapacity to the highest-yielding customers.Results indicate that the MNL regression is an effective tool to analyze themarket segmentation and demand allocation for coworking operators. Afterour successful analysis, we are prepared to argue with confidence that revenuemanagement models are applicable to coworking operations. / I denna uppsats undersöker vi den potentiella användningen och genomförandetav intäktsoptimeringsmodeller för coworking operatörer. En kvantitativ studiemed primär data från en coworking operatör har genomförts med en kritiskrealismfilosofi och ett abduktivt tillvägagångssätt. Det finns mycket forskningkring intäktsoptimering, framför allt inom flyg- och hotellbranschen, men ingensom behandlar intäktsoptimeringsmodeller med avseendepå coworking operatörer. Denna masteruppsats syftar till att bidra med kunskapför att fylla gapet kring revenue management för coworkingkontor, som saknas ibefintlig, svensk akademisk forskning idag.Vitala funktioner som utgör intäktoptimeringsmodeller ämnade för hotellochflygindustrin har identifierats och analyserats med målet att utforskamöjlig implementering för coworkingoperatörer. I uppsatsen genomförsen marknadssegmentering med hjälp av en multinomial regressionsanalys.Vidare görs en multinomial regressionsanalys med samtliga produktklasser somberoende variabler, för att få ut sannolikhetsfördelningen för vilka produkter somefterfrågas av den totala efterfrågan. Resultatet kan användas för att optimeratotala intäkterna genom att beräkna hur många platser som bör reserveras åthögt avkastande kunder, och hur många som kan hyras ut i tidigt skede. Förändamålet har vi tillämpat den så kallade Expected Marginal Seat Revenuemetoden, EMSR.Resultatet indikerar att multinomial logistisk regression är ett effektivt sätt attanalysera marknadssegment och styra efterfrågan till önskad produktklass. Samtatt användandet av rekommenderad revenue management modell är applicerbarpå coworking verksamheter. Alternativt: Resultatet indikerar att: i. multinomiallogistisk regression är ett effektivt sätt att analysera marknadssegment och styraefterfrågan till önskad produktklass. ii. användandet av rekommenderad revenuemanagement modell är applicerbar på coworking verksamheter.

There is an asymmetry in demand for transportation means of goods and commodities globally. One industry in which this trend is especially prominent is the pharmaceutical industry, where the European Union is by far the largest net exporter of pharmaceutical products globally, followed by Switzerland. The largest global net importer of pharmaceutical products is America, and given that many pharmaceutical products need to be transported in a cold chain, a niche within the transportation industry has grown – one that focuses primarily on transportation of high-value temperature-sensitive goods. Transportation companies working with circulating assets around the world need to determine how much capacity can be allocated to the sale of one-way trips (which may displace assets within the fleet to places in which they cannot be sold again due to the lack of business) whilst still allowing the sale of round-trip leases to continue. We conducted a case study within Company A that is a cold chain provider for air freight to provide context on how a heuristic model for capacity control should be developed, and incorporated this with learnings from theory within the fields of revenue management and fleet management together with literature in similar business settings. This resulted in a four-step model with unique planning horizons for each level, ranging from strategic perspectives for fleet balancing down to operational aspects of daily allocation and release of containers. We conclude which factors are essential for the context of the case study and showcase how a model can be constructed taking these findings into account. The thesis deals with the issue of capacity control for one-way leases. Other models have used pricing strategies to accomplish similar tasks and this is not included in the proposed model which is a limitation of this study, this is discussed and elaborated on. Furthermore, possible implications for the customer behaviour with the suggested model is discussed. / Det finns en global asymmetri i efterfrågan för transport av gods och råvaror. En industri där detta är speciellt framstående är läkemedelsindustrin – där Europa är den största exportören globalt följt av Schweiz. Den största importören av dessa produkter är Nordamerika, och givet att många läkemedelsprodukter behöver transporteras i en kylkedja har en nisch inom transportsektorn vuxit fram – en som fokuserar primärt på transport av temperaturkänsligt gods av högt värde. Transportbolag som jobbar med cirkulerande tillgångar världen över behöver bestämma hur mycket kapacitet som kan allokeras till envägsuthyrningar (vilket kan fördela flottan så att ingen efterfrågan finns för att sälja dessa igen) medan den fortsatta försäljningen av tur-och-retur-uthyrningar fortfarande tillåts. Vi utför en fallstudie inom Företag A, som tillhandahåller tjänster för kylkedjor gjorda för flygfrakt, detta för att skapa förståelse för hur en heuristisk modell för kapacitetskontroll kan utvecklas. Detta vävs samman med lärdomar från teori inom fälten intäktsoptimering och förvaltning och styrning av utrustningsflottor tillsammans med litteratur inom liknande affärskontexter. Detta resulterade i en fyrstegsmodell med unika planeringshorisonter för varje nivå. Modellen sträcker sig från strategiska beslut för balansering av flottan ner till operationella aspekter för daglig allokering och överlåtande av containrar. Vi sammanfattar vilka faktorer som är relevanta inom ramarna för fallstudien och visar hur en modell kan vara uppbyggd där dessa faktorer tas i beaktning. Avhandlingen hanterar problemet kapacitetskontroll för envägsuthyrningar. Andra modeller har använt prissättningsstrategier för att åstadkomma liknande mål och detta har inte inkluderats i den föreslagna modellen vilket är en begränsning i avhandlingen, detta diskuteras och vidareutvecklas. Möjliga implikationer på kundbeteende med den föreslagna modellen diskuteras också.