Decision 2020 – A Revenue Management Parable

It’s election week, and there is an air of limbo in the country as we wait for the result and generally try to make sense of one of the strangest election cycles in memory. But when the no-doubt extensive obituaries of “Decision 2020” come to be written, the question most will have to attempt to answer is this: “What the **** happened with the polls?”
The inaccuracy of polls leading up to this week’s election was nothing short of astonishing, particularly those taken in the all-important battleground states. Generous predictions for Joe Biden evaporated, with huge polling leads in states like Michigan and Wisconsin translating to the narrowest of wins, or narrow Biden leads in states like Ohio and Florida turning into comfortable Trump holds. Similarly, Senate seats that were “in play” according to the polls appear so far to have attracted vastly more money than votes.
The non-performance of reputable polls in key races has left even the most seasoned political analysts asking where polling goes from here. As we wonder what polling data will be useful for in future elections, we are reminded of another ubiquitous but potentially misleading form of market intelligence: pricing data. Multifamily revenue management decisions are frequently guided, or at least heavily influenced by competitor pricing data. But whether the data improves the quality of the decisions is far from clear.
When the data gets it wrong
Don’t get me wrong; local market conditions are a vital input to pricing, and the movement of competitor prices is……