We are starting the New Year by reading the interesting thesis Three Essays on Revenue Management in Nonprofit Performing Arts Organizations (2016) by Andrea Baldin. The dissertation demonstrates the effectiveness of different Revenue Management techniques in non-profit performing arts organizations.

Andrea Baldin defines Revenue Management in this way: RM can be defined as a set of optimization strategies that match supply and demand by acting on the prices and the availability capacity (Smith et al., 1992). The aim of RM is to maximize the revenue by allocating the right capacity to the right customers at the right price.

Two of the three essays in the thesis use and analyse real data from The Royal Danish Theatre. Baldin focuses on customers’ choice behaviour when buying a theatre ticket. He examines if and how different attributes, that are a source of price discrimination, affect the choice of tickets among different types of ticket buyers. From his results, he concludes that customer characteristics (age, frequency of theatre attendance etc.) define different patterns of behaviour when it comes to ticket purchases. Finally, Baldin presents models that may guide theatres in their price settings.

Even though this perspective on audiences and customers is very different from Suitcase’s explorative methodological studies, it shows an aspect of the large context, which our work and knowledge is part of. A Suitcase of Methods contributes with qualitative perspectives, details, stories, etc. about the audience, and this knowledge is not only communicated on this blog, on seminars etc. It is also part of the theatres extensive quantitative work on audience behaviour. It is the combination of numbers, facts, and personal narratives that gives us comprehensive and continuously growing insight into who our audience is, and what they find relevant.

You can read the entire thesis here.