The primary objective of the Section to promote the practices of Revenue Management and Pricing.

Our Mission

1. To advance the development and application of Operations Research methods, techniques and tools as they apply to the field of Revenue Management and Pricing;
2. To promote the development and application of Revenue Management and Pricing in new industries;
3. To encourage the exchange of information among practitioners, users, and researchers in the area of Revenue Management and Pricing; and
4. To promote high professional standards in the application of Revenue Management and Pricing.

What is revenue management?

Originally known as yield management and developed in the airline industry in the wake of deregulation in the late 1970s, revenue management controlled the price of seats. Although the focus was on opening and closing fare classes, the net effect was price changes, and as the discipline has evolved the line between revenue management and operational pricing has blurred.

What is unique about the pricing techniques championed by the INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section?

Pricing has been around as long as people have traded. What differentiates the pricing championed by the INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section is an ardent focus on the use of data, mathematics, and computers to better understand purchasing behavior and to recommend better prices. These pricing techniques tend to be operational – what price do I offer when the next customer walks in the door – thus distinguishing them from the activities typically associated with marketing departments – determining static price lists and running promotions, for example. Revenue management techniques in particular are frequently associated with high volume, computer-automated transactions such as those found in the travel industry, where millions of forecasts and price changes occur daily.

For more information or for further reading, see our listing of RM books.