Whether, when and which: Modelling advanced seat reservations by airline passengers

Shuai Shao, Göran Kauermann and Michael Smith ()

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2020, vol. 132, issue C, 490-514

Abstract: Motivated by the growing importance of ancillary revenues in the airline industry, we propose a statistical model for Advanced Seat Reservation (ASR). We focus on the questions of whether, when and which seats are selected by passengers. To answer these questions, we employ a discrete time duration model, combined with a multinomial choice model with varying consideration set. Unknown smooth covariate effects are used, along with seat-specific random effect terms for seat selection. The model is applied to a rich dataset of 485,279 bookings on five intercontinental routes, extracted from the complete booking database of a major European airline. We find strong evidence of ‘middle seat avoiding’ and ‘front seat preferring’ effects, along with substantial additional seat-specific heterogeneity. We also show that the probability of making an ASR depends on its price in relation to the ticket price, the distribution channel, the number of days to departure and seasonal effects. These and other insights allow for product differentiation and variable pricing in ASR for each and every seat. In addition, simple variations of the statistical model can also be used for other ancillary products—such as on-board dining and preferential baggage checking—that are purchased in the same way as ASR.

Keywords: Advanced seat reservation; Airline ancillary pricing; Consumer behaviour; Discrete time duration model; Multinomial Logit; Varying consideration set; Willingness to pay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856418311352
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transa:v:132:y:2020:i:c:p:490-514

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2019.12.002

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose

More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().