Can a basketball team sell empty seats after the game starts?
We haven’t had a sports story in a while, but here’s one from the Golden State — specifically, the Golden State Warriors (who play in the less than golden Oakland). The Warriors have teamed up with a...
View ArticleApple replaces queues with a lottery
Apple products have a tendency to generate buzz with fanboys eager to line and wait and wait to get whatever new product on its launch date. This routinely happens in the US and other countries. But...
View ArticleThe Yankees versus the open market for tickets
StubHub and Major League Baseball have just renewed their agreement that make the eBay the official reseller for most of MLB’s teams. As Businessweek tells it, this has to date generally been a good...
View ArticlePriorities on the Beltway: Big Data and variable tolling
Slate has an article that asks an intriguing question: Who Really Benefits From “Big Data”? (Dec 27). That’s clearly something of a loaded question. Big Data is currently everyone’s favorite answer for...
View ArticleNow at Disneyland: Mouse vs. Scalpers
How do you make sure customers take advantage of a promotion the way you want them to take advantage of it? The question comes up at Disneyland. The Mouse people are currently offering a deal that...
View ArticlePaying by the minute at a coffeehouse
How should a cafe price? After all, most users are actually consuming multiple things at a coffeehouse. Yes, they are getting a jolt of caffeine and maybe a muffin, but they are also consuming a...
View ArticleWhat explains the price of a flu vaccine?
It’s been a bad flu season with hospitals in many cities overwhelmed with patients. This is largely a preventable problem. The annual flu vaccine is not perfect but a wider use of the vaccine would...
View ArticleDynamically pricing the Warriors
Back in the early 90s, I was in graduate school in the Bay Area and playing in a regular faculty-PhD student basketball game. At the time, the Golden State Warriors held a high draft pick and while...
View ArticlePricing Northwestern basketball tickets
A (really) brief follow up on yesterday’s post on pricing Warrior basketball tickets. Checkout what our colleagues Sandeep Baliga and Jeff Ely are doing with the price of Northwestern basketball...
View ArticleDeadlines and Cubs tickets
It’s an absolutely gorgeous in Chicago today. It’s so nice that when our son said he wished he had a Little League game today, my wife and I said that we would see about getting Cubs tickets for...
View ArticleJumping theme park lines
How much would you spend to skip a line at a theme park? At Universal Studios Hollywood at least some people are willing to pony up a lot (At Theme Parks, a V.I.P. Ticket to Ride, New York Times, Jun...
View ArticleThe impact of TKTS
TKTS has long been a Time Square fixture. For those unfamiliar with it, TKTS is a non-profit that sells discounted tickets to Broadway and off-Broadway shows. It recently celebrated its fortieth...
View ArticleShould airlines show you all available seats on a flight?
Check out these two images from the Wall Street Journal (Airline Seats Available for Elite Fliers Only, July 12). Both show available seats on an American Airline flight from LA to New York. The first...
View ArticleGamification and congestion
Congestion is a common problem in services. A large number of customers put demands on the system all at the same time and delays ensue. A few weeks ago we posted about GymFlow, an app that tries to...
View ArticleCafeterias, queues, & Goldman Sachs — yes, I said Goldman Sachs
In the basement of the Kellogg School, there is a cafe. It’s a busy cafe, which says more about the available alternatives than about its absolute quality. Because it gets busy and because a good...
View ArticleManaging Black Friday
I have a long-standing interest in Black Friday — less because I want to go shopping but more because it poses some interesting questions on how firms compete and how they manage customers. The news...
View ArticleWhat happens when customers are given the option of jumping the queue at a...
If you live here in the States, you may never have heard of the telecommunications company EE. But they are a major player in the United Kingdom with brands like Orange and T-Mobile. According to their...
View ArticleThe best day to buy an airline ticket revisited
What would you expect to be the most popular post on this blog? Something on lean operations? One of those posts on managing queues? Nope. The most popular post by a wide margin (more than 13,000 page...
View ArticleWhat?! No Dessert?
I have a sweet tooth. I am rarely too full to pass on dessert. However, an article in Washingtonian magazine suggests that restaurants (at least those in metro DC) may inadvertently be saving people...
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