| Title: |
1 Price Discrimination by Day-of-Week of Purchase: Evidence from the U.S. Airline Industry |
| Authors: |
Steven L. Puller; Lisa M. Taylor; Jel Codes L; Adi Mayer |
| Contributors: |
The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives |
| Source: |
http://econweb.tamu.edu/puller/AcadDocs/PT_weekend_pricing.pdf. |
| Publication Year: |
2011 |
| Collection: |
CiteSeerX |
| Description: |
This paper identifies a source of price discrimination utilized by airlines-- price discrimination based on the day-of-the-week that a ticket is purchased. Using unique transaction data, we compare tickets that are similar in every observable aspect except the day-of-week purchased, that is, traveling on the same day of week on the same route on the same airline with the same ticket restrictions on flights with the same load factors and purchased the same number of days in advance. We find that fares are 5 % lower when purchased on the weekend. We conjecture that this is a form of second-degree price discrimination. If airlines believe that weekend purchasers are more likely to be price-elastic leisure travelers, then they may offer lower prices on weekends when the mix of purchasing customers makes demand more price elastic. This conjecture is supported by the finding that the weekend purchase effect is distinctly larger on routes with a mixture of both business and leisure customers than on routes primarily traveled by leisure customers. These results have implications for other industries that have the ability to change prices daily based upon the types of customers who purchase on a specific day. |
| Document Type: |
text |
| File Description: |
application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| Relation: |
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.224.6511; http://econweb.tamu.edu/puller/AcadDocs/PT_weekend_pricing.pdf |
| Availability: |
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.224.6511; http://econweb.tamu.edu/puller/AcadDocs/PT_weekend_pricing.pdf |
| Rights: |
Metadata may be used without restrictions as long as the oai identifier remains attached to it. |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.ACD32044 |
| Database: |
BASE |