Question

3. Suppose you are the manager of an airline company. As a recent MBA graduate, you decided to use all the knowledge you have acquired to improve the firm’s pricing decisions. To begin with, you search for a market survey company to find out the demand curve for flights. The market survey company sent you back a report stating that there are two distinct segments of consumers - tourists and business travelers – and that their demand curves are given by the following equations:

Market Demand for Tourists: Q = 500 – 2P + 2I

Market Demand for Business Travelers: Q = 1000 – P + I

Where Q is the quantity demanded (in thousands of tickets), P is the price for a ticket, and I is the median income of each segment of consumers.

Currently, the price for tourists is $200 and the price for business travelers is $500. Moreover, the median income of tourists is $50 and the median income of business travelers is $100.

a) Using the point slope elasticity formula, what is the price elasticity of demand for airline tickets at the current price and income level for each group of consumer? Hint: to answer this question you will need to accurately determine the slope of the two demand curves given the level of income for each group and find the quantity each group demands at the current price for the group given the income that each group has.

b) Based on your result in (a), do you think you should raise or lower the price paid by tourists? What about the price paid by business travelers?

c) To verify your answer in (b), set a new price for tourists that is $50 higher or lower than the original price of $200 and a new price for business travelers that is $50 higher or lower than the original price of $500. Make your determination of whether to raise or lower the price based on your answers in (b). Relative to the revenue accrued in each market segment with the original prices, what happens to the revenue accrued by the airline in each market segment with the new prices? Hint: If the revenue does not increase then you need to redo this problem by moving the price in the opposite direction!

d) Using the two-point elasticity formula (the arc elasticity formula), what is the price elasticity of demand when you go from the original price to the new price? In doing this problem hold income constant.

Answer 1