Revenue Management in a Multi-Channel Environment: The Effect of Pricing Strategies on Perceived Fairness

The rapid development of technology has made the hotel booking process become easier and more convenient, but it has also made hotel revenue management practices become more complex. Researchers have noticed the issues caused by perceived fairness. Yet, only a few studies have examined the impact of the pricing strategies over perceived fairness. Furthermore, no previous research study has examined Best rate guarantee (BRG), rate disparity, and rate frame together and investigated the interaction effects among these strategies on perceived fairness. This study aims to examine the potential effects of three revenue management pricing strategies (BRG, rate (dis)parity, and rate frame) on customers\u27 perceived fairness. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial between-subject experimental design was used. Eight scenariobased surveys were employed to evaluate how potential hotel guests react to three different revenue management strategies. This study has both practical and theoretical contribution. Practicality, the outcome of this study can potentially offer a set of guidelines for hoteliers to follow in terms of revenue management pricing strategies across multiple distribution channels, while providing revenue managers with empirically supported suggestions to increase hotel revenue. Theoretically, this study is one of the first attempts regarding perceived fairness of RM strategies examining both rate parity and BRG, which significantly contributes to the existing literature on revenue management