2 Price strategies
6.5 Reflections on the thesis process
The author already had a lot of information about the topic, but the whole thesis process and the discussions with the companies widened the picture even more. There lies much more behind revenue management than one would think. It also was interesting to notice that mod-ern revenue management should be customer-orientated and that it will expand to other ser-vice sectors in very near future.
The author learned a lot about the qualitative research method and found it more difficult research type than quantitative method, which he had experience of in his earlier studies. The difficulty in qualitative research occurred from the efforts of analysing the data as objective as possible. The thesis reflects the opinions of the author thus making the conclusions of the results subjective.
The thesis writing took longer time than expected due to difficulties of finding the academi-cally reliable literature and the most suitable companies for the interviews, but the final results made it worth waiting. Problems with the time management also emerged, when he tried to combine the studies and work together. The best solution here would have been a timetable for each day or a week or then placing the whole research to the beginning of the year when the companies could have had more time to participate in the research.
The author was also surprised how expensive the research process became. The costs came from two academic books bought from United States, telephone calls and travel expenses.
The estimated costs were about 250 €. The author should have had a budget for this thesis.
The most memorable experience from the thesis process was for the author the great oppor-tunity to get familiar with different companies. The author learned that it is very important to listen to what customers are saying and to build strategies or product development on that information. If a company does not listen to its clients, this may have a negative impact for the future business.
From the cultural point of view the author also received good experiences, because the inter-viewees were from several countries or their strategic decisions were influenced by interna-tional relations. As the author is studying internainterna-tional business administration, the opportu-nity to write the thesis in Norway and to study international companies put all that he learned in practice.
The whole thesis process started from the own interest of the author towards the topic and he is hoping to have a career in revenue management in the future. The author has benefitted from the thesis writing and has taken in use the acquired knowledge in his present work ex-plaining different clients why hotel or rental car prices varies from reservation channel to an-other and by the time, and why restaurants restricts the dining time of their guests.
Finally, the author would like to thank one of the interviewee for suggesting literature and, of course, all those companies who participated in the research. He also would like to thank the teachers of Haaga-Helia for supporting his work.
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