The Following Excerpt Describes Qcue, a Software-Based Dynamic Pricing Management

question 115

Multiple Choice

The following excerpt describes Qcue, a software-based dynamic pricing management company that has developed software to assist professional and collegiate sports teams increase their ticket sales by practicing near-perfect price discrimination. Dynamic pricing will become much more prevalent in both professional and collegiate sports over the next few years. . . . In an industry where the demand across games tends to be dissimilar for a plethora of reasons-some predictable, yet some spurious-it only makes sense that the pricing of sports tickets should allow teams the ability to price their inventory in the most efficient way possible. . . . "Accurately pricing tickets is a very difficult process," says Barry Kahn, the CEO of Qcue. "In the initial stages, we had both technical and emotional barriers to overcome. We were changing the way things had been done for so many years, moving from pricing tickets 9 months out and keeping them static, to allowing the price to flex right up until the first pitch. That meant educating those in charge of ticketing operations as well as the fans." . . . In 2009, Qcue had one client. In 2010, they were working with three teams. Today their roster includes 30+ teams across MLB, MLS, NHL and NBA.
Source: Patrick Rishe, "Dynamic Pricing: The Future of Ticket Pricing in Sports," Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/prishe/2012/01/06/dynamic-pricing-the-future-of-ticket-pricing-in-sports/, January 6, 2012.
Another market that is well known for this practice is the market for:

• A) airline tickets.
• B) secondary education.
• C) online music.
• D) economics textbooks.
• E) college dorm rooms.

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