Informedness and Customer-Centric Revenue Management Defended on Friday, 16 January 2009

The recent pervasive adoption of modern IT in the marketplace has profoundly changed information availability to customers and firms. This improved information endowment results in changes in consumer behavior and corporate strategy. This dissertation proposes new theoretical perspectives – firm informedness, customer informedness, and informedness through learning – to re-conceptualize the decision making process of customer-centric revenue management. It consists of three studies. First, using multiple cases in which firms adopt smart cards and mobile technologies in America, Europe, and Asia, we examine the value creation process of the firm using the explanation of firm informedness and investigate how it advances revenue management. Second, we test the theory of consumer informedness and examine heterogeneity in consumer preferences using stated choice experiments. We find the evidence for trading down and trading out behavior and show that the use of mobile ticketing technologies can help firms to build a hyper-differentiated transport market. Finally, using a computational simulation, we explore the opportunity for devising service offerings to capture profitable consumer responses, considering demand-driven revenue and capacity-management. Overall, this research introduces methods, models, and guidelines for organizations to strategize the informational challenge, make informed decisions, and create transformational values to win in today’s competitive network environment.

Keywords

adaptive learning, capacity management, consumer choice, consumer informedness, firm informedness, hyperdifferentiation, information availability, IT, mobile technology, pricing, public transport, rational expectations, resonance marketing, revenue management, smart cards, simulation, stated choice experiment