Information and Pricing Strategy and Channel Conflicts in Air Travel Industry
Topics: Finance Global Internet of Things Marketing / Sales Operations
Tuck Campus: Conway Seminar Room, Noon on April 10, 2012
During the past decade, we have witnessed a great transformation in the manner in which travel and hospitality services are sold due to the technological innovations of the Internet. Professor Kauffman will discuss the complexities of information strategy in the air travel industry that have been created in this environment, and how information strategy has been changing. He will assess some of the impacts of the recent conflicts that have emerged due to the rising strength of digital intermediaries that are now play critical information gatekeeper roles in the industry’s structure. He also will share what we have learned about price elasticity of demand in the offline and online channels, and how electronic distribution channel conflict has led to à la carte pricing, and service unbundling and decommoditization. He will further discuss the theory of information transparency, and transparency-based design of effective online business-to-consumer selling mechanisms. His perspectives are based on evidence from multiple industry field studies with “big data” and case analysis. His work provides a new reading on how electronic travel distribution has been transformed, and the broader implications for multi-channel pricing strategy.
Robert J. Kauffman is currently a Visiting Professor of Information Systems and Strategy at the School of Information Systems and the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University, where he serves as Associate Dean of Research, and Deputy Director of the Living Analytics Research Center (LARC), a joint venture with Carnegie Mellon University. He also is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Digital Strategies of the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. Previously, he served at Arizona State University, the University of Minnesota, New York University and the University of Rochester. He also visited the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and worked in international banking and finance prior to his academic career. His graduate degrees are from Cornell University (M.A.) and Carnegie Mellon University (M.S., Ph.D.). His recent research has appeared in Information Systems Research, the Journal of Management Information Systems, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Decision Support Systems, and the American Accounting Association’s Journal of Information Systems in 2011 and 2012. In August 2012, he will chair the Summer Institute on Analytics for Business, Consumer and Social Insights at LARC, and also the 2012 International Conference on Electronic Commerce in Singapore. He is currently developing special issues for Cornell Hospitality Quarterly on information strategy in the hospitality industry, and for the Journal of Management Information Systems on technology and competitive strategy in the networked economy.
