Designing Price Ladders in Competitive Environments: Theory and Field Experiments

航空公司、电子零售商和酒店的票价是动态变化的。这些车费是如何厘定的？通常，公司首先会创建一个票价阶梯--即具有多个价格点的阶梯。一旦设计好了这个阶梯，销售季节就开始了，随着时间的推移，票价会随着销售和库存的变化而逐渐变化。现在考虑一下竞争环境中的价格阶梯，不同的公司提供不同的“质量”或合意的产品。例如，假设有两家航空公司提供蒙特利尔和渥太华之间的航班--一家提供直达航班，另一家提供多次中途停留的航班。在这样的环境下，竞争对手在设计价格阶梯时应该如何考虑质量差异？在实践中，公司通常不会区分他们的价格阶梯。例如，航空公司和酒店使用“阶梯匹配策略”，即竞争对手为特定市场设计相同的价格阶梯。我们可以通过航空公司价格发布公司的数据库来核实，96.5%的航空公司市场出现了阶梯匹配。事实上，即使在质量上存在奇怪的差异-例如，直达和转机行程，或者短途和长时间的中途停留-梯子匹配也会发生。当一种产品比另一种更有吸引力时，竞争对手为什么会设计同样的价格阶梯？他们这一策略背后的想法是，市场力量动态地推动价格差异化。因此，如果一家公司提供了更好的产品，消费者会积极购买，价格会迅速上升(而低质量的产品将锁定在底部)。因此，公司不会主动向阶梯中注入质量差异，而是让差异化“由需求驱动”。这种策略在过去可能是有效的，当时消费者缺乏比较产品的系统--例如Expedia这样的票价聚合器--而且质量差异化很小。但是，正如公司自己承认的那样，时代已经改变，是时候修改价格阶梯的设计了。在这个为期5年的研究计划中，我的目标是研究竞争环境下的价格阶梯差异。为了实现这一目标，我的战略计划将被分为三个模块，每个模块都有自己的短期目标：在模块I中，我寻求通过博弈论模型找到最优的阶梯差异化策略(以及这些策略的竞争影响)。在模块II中，我试图通过优化模型来理解，当竞争对手使用质量差异化的梯子(而不是匹配的梯子)时，动态定价应该如何优化。在模块III中，我的目标是通过大规模的现场实验，利用与航空公司正在进行的研究伙伴关系，在现实世界中验证理论发现。这一计划将帮助管理者提高市场效率，制定公平有效的定价，从而对企业和消费者产生积极影响。

Airlines, e-retailers, and hotels change their fares dynamically. How are these fares determined? Typically, companies begin by creating a fare ladder-i.e., a ladder with multiple price points. Once this ladder is designed, the selling season begins and, as time goes by, the fare progressively changes as a function of sales and inventory. Now consider price ladders in a competitive environment, where different companies offer products of varying "quality" or desirability. Think, for example, of two airlines offering a flight between Montreal and Ottawa-with one offering a direct flight and the other a flight with multiple layovers. In such an environment, how should competitors incorporate quality differences when designing the price ladder? In practice, firms do not typically differentiate their price ladders. For example, airlines and hotels use a "ladder matching strategy," whereby competitors design the same price ladder for a given market. We can verify, via the Airline Tariff Publishing Company database, that ladder matching occurs in 96.5% of the airline markets. In fact, ladder matching happens even when there are outlandish differences in  quality-e.g., a direct vs a connecting itinerary, or a short vs a long layover. Why would competitors design the same price ladder when one product is more attractive than the other? Their idea behind this strategy is that the market forces dynamically drive price differentiation. Thus, if a company offers a better product, consumers will buy it aggressively and the fare will quickly escalate up the ladder (while a low-quality product will stay locked to the bottom). Thus, companies do not proactively infuse quality difference into the ladder but, instead, let differentiation be "demand-driven." This strategy may have been efficient in the past, when consumers lacked systems to compare products-e.g., fare aggregators like Expedia-and when quality differentiation was minor. But, as firms themselves admit, times have changed, and it is time to revise how price ladders are designed. In this 5-year research program, my goal is to study price price ladder differentiation in competitive environments. To achieve this goal, my  program will be broken into three modules, each with its own short-term objective: In Module I, I seek to find optimal ladder differentiation strategies (and the competitive implications of these strategies) via game-theoretical models. In Module II, I seek to understand, via optimization models, how dynamic pricing should be optimized when competitors use quality-differentiated ladders (as opposed to matched ladders). And, in Module III, my objective is validate the theoretical findings in the real world, via a large-scale field experiment, by leveraging an ongoing research partnership with an airline. This program will help managers increase market efficiency, develop  equitable and efficient pricing, and, thus, positively impact on firms and consumers.