July 30, 2013 ♦ 2:00-3:30 pm ESTIf your strategy adjustment doesn’t have a predefined way to measure the results, then it’s not really a test. So often we hear revenue managers say that they’re testing a new strategy, but upon probing to understand the details of their “test,†we often realize that they’re not really testing anything. They’re merely doing something different, which may or may not produce better results…and we’ll never know for sure if it did.
Without a clearly defined plan to measure the results, doing something different with your rate or inventory strategy is not really a test. To be a test, the change in strategy has to have specific steps, parameters, timelines, and methods of measurement in order to determine if the action produced the desired results. Simply put, the test has to have a measurement to really be called a test.