(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-06-22)
Crystal, Carolyn Roberts
Revenue Management (RM) is an important tool for matching supply and demand by segmenting customers into different segments based on their willingness-to-pay and allocating scarce capacity to the different segments in a way that maximizes firm revenues. The benefits of RM are well accepted in the hospitality industry, and the technical aspects of RM form a rich analytical research stream. However, the research is missing a holistic examination of important elements of effective RM. The literature shows that market segmentation, pricing, forecasting, capacity allocation, IT use, organizational focus, aligned incentives, organizational structure, and education and training contribute to effective RM. We group these elements into two concepts: RM technical capability and RM social support capability and propose that these nine elements positively impact RM performance.
We develop scales to measure our constructs and collect responses in the hotel industry. Our survey yields interesting results. In line with expectations, we find evidence that forecasting and organizational focus positively impact RM performance. On the other hand, the results show evidence that improved organizational structure negatively impacts RM performance. We provide a few explanations for this non-intuitive result and proposals for future research.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-06-05)
Kroes, James Raymond
The outsourcing of elements of supply chain processes is now an integral component of the operationalization of a firm s competitive business strategy. While the purported goal of outsourcing is usually to derive a competitive advantage in the marketplace, it is not clear whether the outsourcing decisions made by firms are always strategically aligned with their overall competitive strategy. To shed light on this important issue, this research study empirically examines the performance impact of the alignment (congruence) between a firm s competitive priorities (cost, flexibility, innovativeness, quality, and time) and the drivers of its outsourcing decisions. First, we develop and validate a survey instrument used to collect data for this study from manufacturing firms operating in the United States. Next, we use structural equation modeling to examine the impact of alignment between individual competitive priorities and related groups of outsourcing drivers. This analysis finds a significant positive relationship between outsourcing alignment and performance for a number of competitive priorities. Finally, we use cluster analysis to develop a taxonomy of manufacturing strategies which are tested to determine the relationship between the alignment of outsourcing decisions and performance. The taxonomic investigation identifies three unique clusters of firms based on their competitive priorities and then determines alignment between each cluster strategy and outsourcing to be significantly associated with better performance. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies in the literature that address the issue of strategic congruence between the outsourcing drivers and competitive priorities of a firm, and the impact of such congruence on firm performance.