Hi all,
We have just recently started using dynamic pricing more frequently. I have a question about how we see this in analytics -
When looking at the incremental income from dynamic pricing for a specific performance, does anyone know if the amounts here will include exchanges (without accepting additional payment). For example, if I have a patron moving from the Friday night concert, into the Saturday night concert of that same series/run. The process on our end for that exchange would be to return the Friday seats (creates an balance owed to the patron), book the Saturday concert in the same transaction (balances back to zero).
The incremental amounts on our end seem high, but we are finding a lot of dependencies in the data we're seeing in Analytics vs. Tstats right across the board.
Any insight would be helpful!
Thank you,
Kim Gent Associate Director of Patron ExperienceKitchener-Waterloo Symphony
The incremental income should not include money from a returned ticket. However, you may see fluctuations in your DP numbers as exchanges happen. If the price of the exchanged-into ticket is higher than the home price of the exchanged-into seat, then the difference is considered incremental income from dynamic pricing. DP is always evaluated as the price of the seat at-sale vs the home price of the seat. If the exchange happens in a new order (dated the day of the exchange), and thus later in the sales cycle after more pricing changes have occurred, then those exchanges could result in a lot of incremental income. Alternately, if the exchanges went from performances without price increases into performances with price increases, then that also would result in increased incremental income. It works in the other direction too. If the original sale were to a performance with increased pricing, and the ticket were then exchanged into a performance with no price changes, you'd see a decrease in incremental income compared to before that exchange occurred.
Put another way: incremental income is not dependent on the difference in price between the Friday and Saturday seat. It reflects changes over time (price events) applied to the currently reserved seat.
If the exchanged out-of-seat cost $100 when originally reserved and had always cost $100 and the exchanged-into seat costs $100 today and has always cost $100, that's $0 from DP before and after the exchange.
If the exchanged out-of-seat cost $105 when originally reserved due to a prior price event but was originally $100, and the exchanged-into seat was originally at $100 but had a price event the day before the exchange increasing it to $105, that's $5 DP both before and after the exchange.
If the exchanged out-of-seat cost $100 when originally reserved and had always cost $100 and the exchanged-into seat was originally $100 but had a price event the day before the exchange increasing it to $105, that's $5 DP after the exchange, but $0 before.
If you have a lot of that last scenario happening, then it'd be fair to say the exchanges are affecting the incremental income. If the above does not shed light on what you're seeing, you may want to do a double-check on the pricing setup for anything out of the ordinary. For example if some prices were initially set up one way and then changed before onsale (not for dynamic pricing purposes, something more like fixing a setup mistake, but the "fix" went in as a price event instead of a change to the home price) then those changes would potentially make all sales seem as though they occurred with increased pricing, which would inflate the incremental income. If none of that sheds any light, could you share the dashboard you're using?