Title: Utility function for airline travel in Nepal and its comparison with India

Authors: Sumeetha Natesan; Chhaya Singh; Goutam Dutta

Addresses: Department of Production and Quantitative Methods, Indian Institute of Management, Wing 14-K, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad 380015, India ' Department of Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunications, University of Mumbai, India ' Department of Production and Quantitative Methods, Indian Institute of Management, Wing 03, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad-380 015, Gujarat, India

Abstract: The competition in the airline market provides an airline passenger with ample open choices to evaluate before finalising a travel decision. The final travel decision is an outcome of a consideration of multiple parameters. In the last decade, Nepal has witnessed impressive growth in international and domestic air traffic, which in turn has led to a growth in tourism in Nepal. It has, therefore, become crucial for competing airlines in Nepal to monitor their services and align the same with respect to airline passengers' preferences. We study the domestic airline travel in Nepal to create a utility function for it and compare the performance of one airline with other competing airlines. The model is based on the logarithmic goal programming model and multiple criteria decision-making. This development also provides a unique opportunity to compare utility functions for airline travel across India and Nepal, two neighbouring countries with different socio-economical setups.

Keywords: utility function; goal programming model; revenue management; multiple criteria decision-making; MCDM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRM.2019.103010

International Journal of Revenue Management, 2019 Vol.11 No.1/2, pp.23 - 45

Received: 05 Jul 2018
Accepted: 30 Oct 2018
Published online: 14 Oct 2019 *

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