Title: Inventory pooling technique from the car rental industry: now and in the autonomous future

Authors: Kuangnen Cheng; Byunghoon Jin

Addresses: Department of Management, Marist College, NY, USA ' Department of Economics, Accounting, and Finance, Marist College, NY, USA

Abstract: This investigation studies the current car rental industry's inventory pooling technique to understand its potential impact on the industry's future survival and success possibility once autonomous vehicles (AVs) requiring no human input. The research utilises live pricing data from the US car rental and ridesharing industry to detect: 1) how players from the car rental industry apply pricing strategy to reduce inventory shuttling activities and balance the demand with supply; 2) whether the current pooling model can be transferred into the future assuming the business model and pricing strategy of the future robotaxi market is similar to those of today's ridesharing industry. Data reveals that between locations within a pool, pricing fluctuations correlate to weekends or weekdays demand pending on its discrete or complimentary relationship. Hypotheses are developed; consequently, determinants impacting inventory pooling are utilised to analyse their compatibility in the future robotaxi market.

Keywords: autonomous vehicles; car rental industry; complementary demand; inventory pooling; robotaxi.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBE.2021.112110

International Journal of Business Environment, 2021 Vol.12 No.1, pp.37 - 63

Received: 12 Dec 2019
Accepted: 28 Apr 2020
Published online: 04 Jan 2021 *

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