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Unconstraining methods for revenue management systems under small demand

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  • Nikolaos Kourentzes

    (University of Lancaster)

  • Dong Li

    (University of York)

  • Arne K. Strauss

    (University of Warwick)

Abstract

Sales data often only represent a part of the demand for a service product owing to constraints such as capacity or booking limits. Unconstraining methods are concerned with estimating the true demand from such constrained sales data. This paper addresses the frequently encountered situation of observing only a few sales events at the individual product level and proposes variants of small demand forecasting methods to be used for unconstraining. The usual procedure is to aggregate data; however, in that case we lose information on when restrictions were imposed or lifted within a given booking profile. Our proposed methods exploit this information and are able to approximate convex, concave or homogeneous booking curves. Furthermore, they are numerically robust due to our proposed group-based parameter optimization. Empirical results on accuracy and revenue performance based on data from a major car rental company indicate revenue improvements over a best practice benchmark by statistically significant 0.5–1.4% in typical scenarios.

Suggested Citation

  • Nikolaos Kourentzes & Dong Li & Arne K. Strauss, 2019. "Unconstraining methods for revenue management systems under small demand," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(1), pages 27-41, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorapm:v:18:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1057_s41272-017-0117-x
    DOI: 10.1057/s41272-017-0117-x
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    Cited by:

    1. Athanasopoulos, George & Kourentzes, Nikolaos, 2023. "On the evaluation of hierarchical forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 1502-1511.
    2. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Athanasopoulos, George, 2021. "Elucidate structure in intermittent demand series," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 288(1), pages 141-152.
    3. George Athanasopoulos & Nikolaos Kourentzes, 2021. "On the Evaluation of Hierarchical Forecasts," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 10/21, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.

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