Make Haste while the Sun Shines

Another aspect on airlines and game theory....last year, my family and I were to go to the UK for my cousin's wedding. We had decided earlier in the year to go on the trip, and having the typical planner family that I have, everyone decided to purchase their tickets 6 months before the holidays (they felt the earlier they bought their tickets, the cheaper they'd be...not quite sure where that reasoning came from). Being the bargain hunter that I am, I chose to wait for a couple of months before the actual departure date. My family kept asking when I would purchase my ticket, but I kept putting it off. I now know that I was playing a game. See, I love to shop and have an innate ability to tell when a good sale is coming my way...okay, maybe not an innate ability, but experience. I knew that the airlines would most likely have some deals pop up as the holiday season came around. It was in the fall, but it was not a high travel period, so I took my chances and waited. If I purchased my ticket with my family members, I'd have ended up paying $700, if I purchased at the current period, I'd pay $625 (already less than what my fam had paid), and if I waited a bit longer, I could get the ticket for way less....I knew that cos of my experience...and so I waited. One day, the ticket price went all the way down to $550, but I waited....I waited and waited until the ticket prices became $900. See, I had played the game, but I had not made the move when I was supposed to. The $550 was the best price those tickets ever were, but I assumed that the airline industry were functioning based on my perception of rationality. In my mind, it was rational to have a dirt cheap ticket in a non-peak travel period, but in their mind, they were in it to make money. They gave me a grace period, but as the saying goes, "you snooze, you lose".

Business School Deferrals: Is there a game?

The link below takes you to a page that analyzes the situation with the decline in business schools granting admission deferrals. Is the game as simple as the schools not granting these deferrals because of the pool of students that will be accepted into the program in the following year? I think there is more to the game than just that. According to the article, the request for deferal can be blamed on the current economy and the cost of an MBA degree.

In the IT/OPs class that we are concurrently taking with SDA, we learnt that the goal of every business is to make money through the sale of the products an organization sells. In this case, the product that the organization is selling is an MBA degree from highly recognized business schools. If students keep requesting deferrals and keep getting them, they are depriving the school from funds that other students who were either on the wait list or were denied admission (because the spot was given to this student requesting a deferral) would have provided. The article also refers to students who are required to provide deferral deposits and to sign forms stating that they will not re-apply to any other programs. Those are strategic moves that these schools are making to secure the funding supply that business school admissions present.

Bottom line is that businesses will do what needs to get done to secure their financial standing amongst competitors. Now, maybe finding ways to increase the overall pie of the game could result in a parento efficient game whereby both the business schools and the students requesting admission deferrals will somehow, both earn the highest payoffs possible. How that level of cooperation will be attained is another topic entirely.

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/dec2009/bs2009127_581931.htm