The Revenue Effect of Demand Misspecification in Event Ticket Pricing

Abstract

We study a finite-horizon dynamic pricing problem for event tickets with limited inventory and time-varying demand. The central practical difficulty is that the total demand function $L(t)$ is not observed directly and must be estimated from data, while pricing decisions are sensitive to its temporal shape. The paper examines how the accuracy of this estimate affects revenue. We consider a model in which sales intensity is driven by the total demand $L(t)$, a price-response function $v(p)$, and a time-dependent willingness-to-pay factor $φ(t)$. The factor $φ(t)$ plays a central role: it captures the increase in customers' willingness to pay as the event date approaches and makes the temporal profile of demand economically important for pricing. Within this framework, the updated numerical study evaluates a benchmark dynamic-programming policy across nine deterministic true-demand scenarios, a collection of feature-aware misspecifications of $L(t)$, and multiple environment regimes induced by $v(p)=e^{-ηp}$, the deadline factor $φ(t)$, and inventory level $Q$. The reported summaries are based on stochastic simulation and a ratio-of-means relative-loss metric. The results show that a more accurate representation of the temporal demand profile leads to more effective pricing decisions and higher revenue. Over the full misspecification collection the aggregate relative revenue loss is $0.42\%$, the upper decile exceeds $1\%$, and the most expensive errors are omissions of late-demand components. The average effect is therefore modest but non-negligible, and it becomes stronger when deadline effects are pronounced and inventory is tight.