IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jorapm/v21y2022i1d10.1057_s41272-021-00284-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A fluid approximation for the single-leg fare allocation problem with nonhomogeneous poisson demand

Author

Listed:
  • Selçuk Korkmaz

    (Ozyegin University)

  • O. Erhun Kundakcioglu

    (Ozyegin University)

  • Orhan Sivrikaya

    (Maltepe University)

Abstract

Fare allocation for legs and O&D pairs plays a crucial role in airline revenue management. Despite a large number of dynamic pricing studies, there are only a few widely adopted studies in which assumptions affect most tactical decisions with potentially large impacts on airline profitability. These decisions involve approximating future pricing schemes, allocation of fare classes, and setting booking limits. We propose a fare allocation model for a single leg in the presence of a realistic nonhomogeneous Poisson demand with an increasing rate. We aim to compute when and how to markup the price for an airfare product (switch to an upper fare class) to maximize the expected revenue. We study a fluid approximation of the underlying stochastic problem considering independent demand from each customer segment and examine different properties that lead to several important insights. Finally, we propose a dynamic look-ahead pricing scheme to compare our fluid approximation results against the well-known EMSRb heuristic and a dynamic programming solution on randomly generated booking request data. Numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach.

Suggested Citation

  • Selçuk Korkmaz & O. Erhun Kundakcioglu & Orhan Sivrikaya, 2022. "A fluid approximation for the single-leg fare allocation problem with nonhomogeneous poisson demand," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(1), pages 81-96, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorapm:v:21:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1057_s41272-021-00284-4
    DOI: 10.1057/s41272-021-00284-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41272-021-00284-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41272-021-00284-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter P. Belobaba, 1987. "Survey Paper---Airline Yield Management An Overview of Seat Inventory Control," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(2), pages 63-73, May.
    2. Guillermo Gallego & Garrett van Ryzin, 1994. "Optimal Dynamic Pricing of Inventories with Stochastic Demand over Finite Horizons," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(8), pages 999-1020, August.
    3. Kalyan Talluri & Garrett van Ryzin, 2004. "Revenue Management Under a General Discrete Choice Model of Consumer Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(1), pages 15-33, January.
    4. de Boer, Sanne V. & Freling, Richard & Piersma, Nanda, 2002. "Mathematical programming for network revenue management revisited," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 72-92, February.
    5. Zhang, Dan & Cooper, William L., 2009. "Pricing substitutable flights in airline revenue management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 197(3), pages 848-861, September.
    6. Yigao Liang, 1999. "Solution to the Continuous Time Dynamic Yield Management Model," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 117-123, February.
    7. S. L. Brumelle & J. I. McGill, 1993. "Airline Seat Allocation with Multiple Nested Fare Classes," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 41(1), pages 127-137, February.
    8. Guillermo Gallego & Garrett van Ryzin, 1997. "A Multiproduct Dynamic Pricing Problem and Its Applications to Network Yield Management," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 45(1), pages 24-41, February.
    9. Richard D. Wollmer, 1992. "An Airline Seat Management Model for a Single Leg Route When Lower Fare Classes Book First," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 40(1), pages 26-37, February.
    10. Peter P. Belobaba, 1989. "OR Practice—Application of a Probabilistic Decision Model to Airline Seat Inventory Control," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 37(2), pages 183-197, April.
    11. Lawrence W. Robinson, 1995. "Optimal and Approximate Control Policies for Airline Booking with Sequential Nonmonotonic Fare Classes," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 252-263, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Syed Asif Raza & Rafi Ashrafi & Ali Akgunduz, 2020. "A bibliometric analysis of revenue management in airline industry," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 19(6), pages 436-465, December.
    2. Youyi Feng & Baichun Xiao, 2001. "A Dynamic Airline Seat Inventory Control Model and Its Optimal Policy," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 49(6), pages 938-949, December.
    3. Jeffrey I. McGill & Garrett J. van Ryzin, 1999. "Revenue Management: Research Overview and Prospects," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(2), pages 233-256, May.
    4. Wang, Weidi & Tang, Ou & Huo, Jiazhen, 2018. "Dynamic capacity allocation for airlines with multi-channel distribution," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 173-181.
    5. Chatwin, Richard E., 2000. "Optimal dynamic pricing of perishable products with stochastic demand and a finite set of prices," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 149-174, August.
    6. Kalyan Talluri & Garrett van Ryzin, 2000. "Revenue management under general discrete choice model of consumer behavior," Economics Working Papers 533, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2001.
    7. Wang, Xiubin & Regan, Amelia, 2006. "Dynamic yield management when aircraft assignments are subject to swap," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 40(7), pages 563-576, August.
    8. Pak, K. & Piersma, N., 2002. "airline revenue management," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2002-12-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    9. Pak, K. & Piersma, N., 2002. "Airline revenue management: an overview of OR techniques 1982-2001," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI 2002-03, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    10. Yigao Liang, 1999. "Solution to the Continuous Time Dynamic Yield Management Model," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 117-123, February.
    11. Dimitris Bertsimas & Sanne de Boer, 2005. "Simulation-Based Booking Limits for Airline Revenue Management," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 53(1), pages 90-106, February.
    12. Kalyan Talluri & Garrett van Ryzin, 2004. "Revenue Management Under a General Discrete Choice Model of Consumer Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(1), pages 15-33, January.
    13. Dan Zhang & Zhaosong Lu, 2013. "Assessing the Value of Dynamic Pricing in Network Revenue Management," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 25(1), pages 102-115, February.
    14. de Boer, Sanne V. & Freling, Richard & Piersma, Nanda, 2002. "Mathematical programming for network revenue management revisited," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 72-92, February.
    15. Mihai Banciu & Fredrik Ødegaard & Alia Stanciu, 2019. "Distribution-free bounds for the expected marginal seat revenue heuristic with dependent demands," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(2), pages 155-163, April.
    16. Yingjie Lan & Huina Gao & Michael O. Ball & Itir Karaesmen, 2008. "Revenue Management with Limited Demand Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(9), pages 1594-1609, September.
    17. Youyi Feng & Baichun Xiao, 2000. "A Continuous-Time Yield Management Model with Multiple Prices and Reversible Price Changes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(5), pages 644-657, May.
    18. Kavitha Balaiyan & R. K. Amit & Atul Kumar Malik & Xiaodong Luo & Amit Agarwal, 2019. "Joint forecasting for airline pricing and revenue management," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(6), pages 465-482, December.
    19. Qing Ding & Panos Kouvelis & Joseph M. Milner, 2006. "Dynamic Pricing Through Discounts for Optimizing Multiple-Class Demand Fulfillment," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 54(1), pages 169-183, February.
    20. Conrad J. Lautenbacher & Shaler Stidham, 1999. "The Underlying Markov Decision Process in the Single-Leg Airline Yield-Management Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(2), pages 136-146, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:jorapm:v:21:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1057_s41272-021-00284-4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.