Randomization Approaches for Network Revenue Management with Customer Choice Behavior
By Sumit Kunnumkal
Production and Operations Management | September 2014
DOI
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/poms.12164
Citation
Kunnumkal, Sumit. Randomization Approaches for Network Revenue Management with Customer Choice Behavior Production and Operations Management onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/poms.12164.
Copyright
Production and Operations Management, 2014
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Abstract
In this paper, we present new approximation methods for the network revenue management problem with customer choice behavior. Our methods are sampling-based and so can handle very general customer choice models. The starting point for our methods is a dynamic program that allows randomization. An attractive feature of this dynamic program is that the size of its action space is linear in the number of itineraries, as opposed to exponential. It turns out that this dynamic program has a structure that is similar to the dynamic program for the network revenue management problem under the so called independent demand setting. Our approximation methods exploit this similarity and build on ideas developed for the independent demand setting. We present two approximation methods. The first one is based on relaxing the flight leg capacity constraints using Lagrange multipliers, whereas the second method involves solving a perfect hindsight relaxation problem. We show that both methods yield upper bounds on the optimal expected total revenue. Computational experiments demonstrate the tractability of our methods and indicate that they can generate tighter upper bounds and higher expected revenues when compared with the standard deterministic linear program that appears in the literature.

Sumit Kunnumkal is a Professor and Area Leader of Operations Management at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He holds a PhD in Operations Research from Cornell University. He received his MS in Transportation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.Tech in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Professor Kunnumkal has previously taught at the Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, and has held visiting positions at the Singapore University of Technology and Design and Universitat Pompeu Fabra. His research interests lie in the areas of pricing and revenue management, retail operations, assortment planning, and approximate dynamic programming.

At ISB, he has taught in the PGP programme, the Fellow programme, and various Advanced Management and Executive Education programmes.

Sumit Kunnumkal
Sumit Kunnumkal