One of the challenges of using promotions effectively is that the more successful they seem initially, the more detrimental they can be over the long run. The reason is that the condition buyers to wait for promotions. Instead of drawing in new business, they shift buying patterns by encouraging people to stock up during promotions [...]
The folks over at Wrox are running a pricing experiment. They’re discounting their ebooks by 50% to see how much extra volume they get, and whether they can convert people who steal ebooks into paying customers. While this is an interesting exercise, and will hopefully give them some good data, there are a couple of [...]
With high fixed costs and perishable products, airlines have long been the poster child for “yield management”, “revenue management”, and other sophisticated statistical methods for optimizing profit. Or minimizing losses. While travel is up, airlines are still looking for ways to maximize the return on their investment. One approach is to unbundle products and services [...]
