Corporate Social Responsibility implications of Yield Management based decisions in hotel management: the consumer perspective

Resumen

An essential element in Yield Management (YM) strategies is to charge different prices for essentially the same service; that approach, however, could be contradiction with CSR transparency requirements. In this paper this problem is analyzed from a theoretical, normative and consumer perspective. Several YM price segmentation criteria are analyzed. Existing customer protection laws and national and international CSR guidelines and standards are reviewed to establish whether they collide with YM techniques being applied in the hotel sector. The Spanish customer attitude towards the acceptability of the various YM techniques is estimated through structured interviews with customer associations. Results indicate that YM techniques are perceived by customer associations as being acceptable from the customer stakeholder perspective. On the other hand, both the various consumer protection legal norms and the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) guidelines and standards devote special attention to the information received by the consumer before and during the purchase, demanding increasing degrees of transparency. This requirement could be construed by some stakeholders as being in conflict with certain YM segmentation approaches. Special care must be taken, therefore, in the thorough analysis of each new segmentation approach being contemplated, to ensure its full legal and CSR compliance. Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, Yield Management, Consumers, Hotel management