ABSTRACT
In “Elevating the cost of doing nothing: an interview with Mark Shafer”, Andreas Hinterhuber, Evandro Pollono and Mark Shafer, discuss the implementation pricing and revenue management at Disney from the perspective of the company’s Senior Vice President of Revenue and Profit Management. Highlights of this interview include the comment that “the cost of doing nothing is not zero”, suggesting that elevating the cost of inaction can overcome internal resistance to change and may thus be an important instrument for articulating the need for change. The interview also highlights the characteristics at the level of individual decision makers that facilitate the implementation of pricing and revenue management and reminds us of the ever-present, frequently invisible biases in this process. Finally, the interview illuminates the importance of data and analytics as the basis for rational decision making in order to drive profits via pricing and revenue management.
