Revenue Management in Hotels

Abstract

In hotel industry, the goal of revenue management is to maximize the revenue by forecasting the future demand based on the current and past reservation data. This paper explores revenue management, revenue management systems (RMS), and success factors in implementing RMS. Fundamentals of revenue management are introduced as well as the benefits of revenue management systems. Some key factors of implementing revenue management systems discussed in this paper are measuring performance, management's commitment, and integration with property management systems.     

Impacts of Generic and Brand Advertising in the U.S. Potato Market

Abstract

The impacts of generic and branded advertising in the U.S. fresh potato, retail frozen potato, and potato chip markets are examined under exogenous and endogenous raw potato supply. The Almost Ideal Demand System is used to estimate the demand components. The general equilibrium elasticities derived from the complete model are used in a simulation analysis to assess the cross-commodity effects of incremental increases in advertising expenditures on equilibrium prices, quantities, revenues, and profits in each sector. The endogeneity of grower supply mitigate the impacts of advertising in the raw commodity sector and in the retail sectors.     

Demand for Fast Food Across Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

City data is used to estimate the demand for fast food. Demographic and income differences across cities are found to be less important than market characteristics like population density and outlets per person. Prices are important determinants of fast food demand as well.     

关于市场均衡论的反论与反思

研究发现,古典主义经济学乃至新古典主义经济学所奉行的市场均衡模型（包括一般均衡和局部均衡）并非白璧无瑕,关于这一模型的经典著述中隐含着许多反论,而右下斜(斜率为负)的供给曲线以及右上斜(斜率为正)的需求曲线是这些反论的核心。这些反论促成了如下反思：供给价格不等于边际成本;供给表并非来自实践,而是来自传统供给法则的主观拟断;边际收益递减并不决定供给曲线的右上扬,相反倒决定了供给曲线的右下斜趋势,而边际收益递增则决定了供给曲线右上斜的趋势。以上反思得出一个基本结论：市场均衡模型并非马歇尔的那个交叉,真实的模型中至少应当包含着右下斜的供给曲线和右上斜的需求曲线。     

Encouraging healthy choices in the retail store environment: Combining product information and shelf allocation

PurposeNutritional information and the visibility of healthier food products inside the store are believed to be important variables in helping shoppers to make healthy choices. However, there remain gaps in our understanding of how consumers select healthy products and how they include complex nutritional information in the decision-making process, in a stimuli rich environment. This research tests the impact of different combinations of stimuli (information and space management) on the selection of healthier products.MethodologyThrough a within-between subjects on-line experiment, a set of hypotheses relating different combinations of information provision (communication) and space management (shelf display) were tested for two different product categories: cereal bars and breakfast cereals. The sample comprised 249 participants within the UK.FindingsResults show that there is no single unique solution to encourage healthy food choices. The characteristics of the category, the frequency of purchase, the way products are displayed on the shelf and the complexity of the nutritional information provided matter.OriginalityThis paper enriches the literature about healthy food choice behaviours by exploring combined interventions in store.     

Does Sleep Really Matter? Examining Sleep among Salespeople as Boundary Role Personnel for Key Job Factors

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Sleep deprivation among employees has become commonplace in the workforce. In the United States, the number of hours individuals sleep per night has declined by an hour and a half per night since the 1960s. As of 2005, seventy-four percent of individuals were getting less than eight hours of sleep per night on weekdays. There are negative ramifications to the organization when employees are sleep deprived such as lost productivity, increased accident rate, and increased absenteeism.

Originality/Value/Contribution of the paper: Although prior research has investigated the impact that sleep deprivation has on unique job positions (e.g., shift workers, transportation), no research has investigated how sleep impacts business-to-business sales employees. Due to the responsibilities of business-to-business sales employees, this type of position should not just be lumped in with other organizational employees. For example, business-to-business sales employees are boundary spanning employees that are responsible for generating revenue for the organization. These sales employees are also more likely to be physically, socially, and psychologically separated from the organization since they frequently work outside of the office. Because of these distinctive roles, this study examines if differences based on sleep duration exist for business-to-business sales employees for two individual and five organizational factors. The two individual factors consisted of grit and happiness while the five organizational factors consisted of perceived organizational support, perceived supervisory support, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions.

Methodology/Approach: Data was collected from 320 business-to-business sales employees using a cross industry survey. The survey was conducted using a Qualtrics panel. Sleep duration was broken into two groups with one group consisting of business-to-business sales employees who sleep, on average, seven or more hours per night and the other group consisting of business-to-business sales employees who sleep, on average, six or less hours per night. The sleep duration groups were determined based on prior research that found adults should regularly sleep seven or more hours per night in order to support optimal health. There were one hundred thirty-four respondents who slept six hours or less and one hundred eighty-six respondents who slept seven or more hours, on average, per night.

Findings: The research question developed was answered by examining the differences between means for the two individual constructs and the five key organizational constructs. Differences in sleep duration for six of the seven sales constructs. There were significant differences between those that slept seven or more hours per night from those that slept six or less for grit, perceived organizational support, perceived supervisory support, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions. Results found that business-to-business sales employees that slept seven or more hours per night exhibited more grit than those that slept six or less hours per night. In addition, business-to-business sales employees that slept six or less hours per night had higher perceptions of both organizational and supervisory support than those that slept seven or more hours per night. Furthermore, business-to-business sales employees that slept six or less hours per night displayed higher job satisfaction and organizational commitment than sales employees that slept seven or more hours per night. Finally, business-to-business sales employees that slept seven or more hours per night indicated higher levels of turnover intentions than sales employees that slept six or less hours per night. There were no significant differences between the two sleep groups for sales employee happiness. Although some of these results may appear to be counterintuitive, conservation of resources theory can be used to explain these findings.

Research Implications: This exploratory study showcases the importance of good sleep among business-to-business sales employees. This study draws on the conservation of resources theory literature to explain the counterintuitive findings. This theory posits that individuals will retain and guard against resource depletion. Additionally, as resources become depleted, other resources are valued to a greater extent. In this study, the resource being depleted is the condition of sleep. When business-to-business sales employees experience a lower average amount of sleep per night (i.e., six hours or less), they perceive higher levels of support, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment than business-to-business sales employees who experience a higher average amount of sleep per night (i.e., seven hours or more). Although this study provides a good initial examination of how sleep impacts sales organizations, this study also highlights the need for additional business-to-business sales employee sleep research. This is the first study that has examined how sleep duration impacts business-to-business sales employees.

Practical Implications: This study is important to sales research because it highlights the impact that poor sleep of business-to-business sales employees has on the organization. For sales organizations, we provide guidance on ways a sales organization can help promote healthy sleep for their business-to-business sales employees. Some examples of guidance provided can be categorized into four primary categories. These categories include (1) proper sleep education, (2) sales management training, (3) creating a sleep friendly workplace environment, and (4) creating specific workplace policies to minimize sleep disturbances such as setting reasonable work hours and sleep accommodating travel schedules.     

RELIABILITY AND REGULATION IN PRICING PUBLIC UTILITY SERVICE

The principal question addressed in this paper concerns the optimal price profile for a regulated public utility where demand is stochastic. Through the introduction of rationing costs and a rate-of-return constraint, marginal revenue will be approximately equated to the cost associated with satisfying the last unit of consumers’demand. This has significant implications for capacity expansion. Namely, capacity is added to keep the risk of failure minimal. As a result, to the extent that the associated costs are higher for the last unit of capacity, a higher marginal revenue and hence price will result. That is, if the marginal unit of capacity has a high operating and delivery cost and low capital cost with high reliability and consequent high total cost (e.g., an internal combustion peaking unit), the indicated result follows. Consequently, there is a direct trade off between the level of risk of failure and marginal revenue. This provides a rationalization for the existence of the price differential between firm and interruptible customers. Finally, if the firm is contrained to earn a fair return on its capital investment, it will set prices to favor the consumers generating the expansion in capacity.     

Marginal Intra-Industry Trade and Employment Reallocation: The Case Study of Iran’s Manufacturing Industries

The purpose of this paper is to test the smooth adjustment hypothesis by using panel technique for Iran’s manufacturing industries at the 4-digit aggregation level of ISIC classification, during time period 2001–2006. According to the smooth adjustment hypothesis, intra-industry trade expansion entails lower adjustment costs than inter-industry one. In this paper, by distinguishing marginal intra industry trade to its horizontal and vertical types and employing the total reallocation effect as a proxy of the adjustment cost of reallocation between sectors and occupations, we’ve tested smooth adjustment hypothesis for both marginal intra industry trade and its types. So, comparing with other empirical studies, this paper has used marginal vertical and horizontal intra industry trade as well as marginal intra industry trade to test the hypothesis. The obtained results do not support the hypothesis for marginal intra industry trade. On the other hand, by distinguishing marginal intra industry trade to marginal horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade, this hypothesis is expectedly confirmed. This result is justifiable since marginal horizontal intra industry trade is a change of intra industry trade with the similar factor intensity while marginal vertical intra industry trade is mainly based on the differences in factor endowment.     

Organizational Buyer Behavior of Caribbean Food and Beverage Importers

Abstract

This paper examines the behavior of Caribbean importers with respect to the purchase of branded food and beverage products manufactured in the Canadian province of Ontario. The determinants of the import purchase decision are identified, and the import response of buyers to changes in the importance rating of key purchase criteria is quantified. The study is based on personal interviews with forty-eight Caribbean food and beverage purchasing executives. The results indicate that price and requests from local customers are the most important decision criteria used by Caribbean importers. Also, firms with a recent history of importing Ontario food and beverage products place a higher level of importance on brand image and package design. A one-unit decrease in the importance rating of the packaging design variable was found to increase the odds of a firm importing from Ontario by thirty percent.     

The Impacts of Retail Promotions on the Demand for Orange Juice: A Study of a Retail Chain

This study examined the impacts of retail promotions on the demand for five brands of orange juices for a retail chain (referred to as Retailer X) and its competitors using the Rotterdam model. Results show that the combination of feature ads and displays had the largest impacts on retail revenue among the four promotional tactics considered, whereas temporary price reductions had no advertising impacts on retail revenue. Results also show that when Retailer X promotes an orange juice (OJ) brand using any of the tactics, a larger portion of the increased demand for the promoted brand comes from reduced demand for other brands of OJ in the same store or chain.A smaller portion comes from the decreased demand in Retailer X's competing stores in the same trading area.     

Market Potential Estimation in International Markets: A Comparison of Methods

ABSTRACT

Marketers use various market potential estimation techniques in international markets. These include method of analogy, proxy indicators, chain ratio method, time series analysis, and multiple regression modeling. This study shows how demand or market potential can be estimated using these methods and compares the findings. The study should be useful to both managers and academics interested in the theory and practice of demand estimation. Although emerging markets and durables are used as examples, the methods discussed are universal and can be applied in any country market.     

FACTOR REALLOCATION COSTS AND TESTS OF THE HECKSCHER-OHLIN TRADE THEORY

The Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson (HOS) theory of international trade, a basic long-run microeconomic model in which adaptation occurs through the costless reallocation of factors between industries, performs poorly. Most attempts to improve the fit of the model have introduced productivity variations across countries. This article considers another source of error: the assumption of perfect factor mobility. Factors are neither perfectly mobile between industries, but neither are they perfectly industry-specific. Factors can be reallocated between industries, but at a cost. In previous work a measure of adjustment costs due to factor specificity were estimated in a two-period model of a firm's input allocation decision. These estimates are used in this article to test international trade models. Two contributions are made. First, factor reallocation costs explain 2–3% of the “missing trade” noted by Trefler. Second, the estimated country productivity differences vary considerably from the actual differences measured in this paper. In contrast to Trefler's finding that inclusion of estimated productivity differences improved the fit of HOS, when measured productivity differences are used in this paper, HOS performs almost as poorly as in its original specification. My findings highlight the inappropriateness of using HOS as a short-run explanation of trade.     

The role of accounting information in revenue management

Revenue management (RM) uses differential pricing and other techniques to manage customer demand for a company's products and services. It judiciously trades off yield and spoilage, and brings rational approaches to pricing for goods and services with a limited shelf life. Because many types of businesses find that growing revenue has a disproportionate impact on operating profits, firms that know and manage their customer base often achieve better bottom-line results by growing revenue rather than by cost-cutting. Initially developed as a marketing tool for pricing airline tickets, today's numerous RM applications can benefit from accounting tools that help assess whether applications will enhance operating profit and monitor their success in doing so. Knowledge of a firm's cost structure, operating leverage in particular, and when to treat RM adjustments as special orders, are the principal accounting lynchpins. Opportunity cost variances and insights from the theory of constraints contribute to effective revenue management/profit enhancement programs. Use of proper accounting information and analytic techniques can help a tolerated union of necessity between RM programs and firm strategy become a desirable marriage of mutual choice.     

地区间的相对剥夺与地方财政收入空间非均衡的演变

本文利用1997－2012年的中国省际财政收入数据，采用不平等指标对地方财政收入的空间非均衡进行度量和分解；运用相对剥夺理论的基尼系数子群分解方法，对地方财政收入空间非均衡进行度量和分解；并采用财政收入流动性方法，对地方财政收入空间非均衡的动态演变进行分析。结果表明：地方财政收入空间非均衡总体呈现缩小趋势，子群间差异是地方财政收入空间非均衡的主要来源，其中东部对中部的相对剥夺对地方财政收入总体差异贡献最大；地方财政收入流动性总体呈现减弱趋势，地方财政收入变动有助于缩小地方财政收入空间非均衡。     

Worlds of demonetisation and delegitimising the grief of the marginal

ABSTRACT

In late 2016, the Indian state announced a policy of demonetisation whereby high denomination currency was legally rendered as invalid. The official aim of the policy was to confront the problems of black money and corruption that India faces. However, currency shortage resulting from the withdrawal of nearly 85% cash adversely affected the large informal economy in India. We explore how demonetisation affected marginal actors in one such informal economy space, the scrap market in some cities in south India. By accessing the narratives of these marginal subjects, we hope to show how the consumption of the governmental-corporate discourse of utopia is simultaneously implicated in the injustices and violence being experienced by several people. We contribute to ongoing theoretical conversations about the linkages between marketing and hegemonic practices of development by contending that hegemonic imaginations of development are linked to delegitimising the grief of marginal subjects. Such delegitimisation is linked to the desires of consumer-citizens in making them feel aligned with utopian fantasies and the reproduction of identity-based inequalities against marginal subjects.     

All Things Being Equal

Abstract

While many consumers enjoy beer, wine and spirits and while many restaurant professionals believe they understand the differences among the three categories, myths and misconceptions abound within the field of beverage alcohol. By observing the production processes for each category it is evident that beer, wine and spirits are more alike than different and consumer preferences and foodservice recommendations should focus on taste, price, food selection and other subjective factors rather than misinformation as to essential nature. Physiological reactions to alcohol beverages are predicated more on the number of ethyl alcohol molecules ingested than on chosen beverage category. As production processes evidence, standard servings of 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of table wine and 1.5 ounces of 80 proof distilled spirits contain equivalent amounts of chemically identical alcohol. Restaurant personnel should observe drinking patterns of beer and wine consumers as closely as spirits drinkers for adverse consequences.     

Perceived Impacts of Government Regulations on Technology Transfers

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effects of government regulation on the technology transfer process. Technology transfer is an important component of an economic development effort in communities, states, and nations. Understanding the process used to transfer technology is needed to promote policies that develop an effective infrastructure to encourage technology transfer. This paper uses qualitative and quantitative methodologies to examine managerial perceptions of the effects of government policies on the technology transfer process. The impacts of tax policies, environmental regulations, health and safety regulations, labor regulations, international trade regulations, and the differences in regulations between countries are studied. Items used to measure the success of technology transfer are proposed.     

Cash Management of Malaysian Banks

ABSTRACT

This study aims to identify seasonal variations in the form of day of the week, month of the year, and time of the month effects on the demand and supply of cash based on daily cash data obtained from a sample of banks in Malaysia. This information would increase the efficiency of vault cash management policies of banks, which would in turn increase the profitability of banks since the degree to which banks optimize their vault cash holding has revenue and cost implications. These seasonal effects have been tested using the one-way ANOVA technique, and the findings revealed that the demand for general cash among Malaysian banks has been on the decline throughout the years due to the introduction of new channels of delivery. There was also sufficient statistical evidence, though to varying extent, that indicates the presence of month of the year and time of the month effects on bank's demand for and supply of cash.     

Convenience,Price, Product

Abstract

This study examines the factors motivating consumers' purchases of specialty food and beverage products via the Internet. While convenience is often cited as a motivating factor, price and product selection have also been identified. This study considered convenience in terms of time, space, and effort. It also identifies several specific sub-categories for price and products. Among respondents who had made a recent online purchase, convenience-related issues were most frequently cited as being relevant to the purchase decision. Product-related factors were important for nearly one-third of the respondents. Price was of relatively little importance.     

Similarity-Based Spatial Methods to Estimate Shelf Space Elasticities

A retailer may allocate shelf space to brands based on factors, unobservable to researchers, which also determine sales. As a consequence, both sales and shelf space are endogenous in historical data, and this leads to inconsistent estimates of shelf space elasticities based on OLS. To obtain valid estimates of shelf space elasticities for allocation decisions, we propose an approach that incorporates the spatial correlation between shelf space and the error term resulting from store-, consumer- and competitor characteristics. The empirical results suggest that our model based on a single cross section of stores corrects for endogeneity and provides valid shelf space elasticities. We also obtain superior predictions compared to several benchmark models. With the same cross section and two observations over time, the alternative methods we use provide comparable shelf space elasticity estimates. However, our proposed method is still superior in the sense that its estimates have somewhat smaller standard errors.