Pricing and demand in car rental market: an empirical study

This work presents a preliminary study aimed at exploring demand dynamics and pricing policies within the Italian car rental sector. An interview was conducted with the top management of a major national car rental provider, aiming at finding managerial implications in pricing decisions on the basis of the demand that occurred. A survey was submitted to local branches located near airports, typically the most profitable locations, to find information, differences, and similarities in demand trends among car rental stations. The goal is to provide useful insights that can serve both to formulate realistic hypotheses for future theoretical research and to offer an initial assessment of market behavior. The findings stem from a pilot test involving a single provider, and they lay the groundwork for a broader investigation that will include multiple car rental companies in order to generalize the results to the national market.