Revenue management and demand fulfillment: matching applications, models, and software

Recent years have seen great revenue management successes, notably in the airline, hotel, and car rental businesses. Currently, an increasing number of industries, including manufacturers and retailers, are exploring ways to adopt similar concepts. Software companies are taking an active role in promoting the broadening range of applications. Additionally technological advances, including smart shelves and radio frequency identification (RFID), are removing many of the barriers to extended revenue management. The rapid developments in supply chain planning and revenue management software solutions, scientific models, and industry applications have created a complex picture, which is not yet well understood. It is not evident which scientific models fit which industry applications and which aspects are still missing. The relation between available software solutions and applications as well as scientific models appears equally unclear. The goal of this paper is to help overcome this confusion. To this end, we structure and review three dimensions, namely applications, models, and software. Subsequently, we relate these dimensions to each other and highlight commonalities and discrepancies. This comparison also provides a basis for identifying future research needs.