Having worked in the transportation industry before getting into consulting, the idea of dynamic pricing has always greatly appealed to me. The space on a flight or truck or train is a perishable commodity, and can be priced based on capacity, customers willingness to pay and market conditions.
Back in 2004 my employer was getting into dynamic pricing, so I spent a fair amount of time understanding PROS and even attended their annual event at Houston. PROS and SABRE between themselves almost served the entire airline industry and supplied them with their dynamic pricing capability.
Timing of the transaction has big role to play in any dynamic pricing scheme, and for a long time the buyers of transportation services ( especially consumers but also businesses) have tried to figure out ways to understand how the dynamic pricing scheme works and trying to outsmart it.
While I have heard of one off cases of success at this, I had never seen a systematic effort to understand this till now. Check this out: A datamining approach to outsmarting dynamic pricing. It is now integrated with BING's travel functionality.
Now I am waiting for the reaction from the dynamic pricing engines and the counter reaction. Let the games begin!
--Datamining_guy
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