Yield management may be a variable pricing strategy, supported understanding, anticipating and influencing consumer behavior so as to maximize revenue or profits from a hard and fast, time-limited resource (such as airline seats or bedroom reservations or advertising inventory). As a selected, inventory-focused branch of revenue management, yield management involves strategic control of inventory to sell the proper product to the proper customer at the proper time for the proper price. This process may result in price discrimination, during which customers consuming identical goods or services are charged different prices. Yield management may be a large revenue generator for several major industries; Robert Crandall, the former Chairman, and CEO of yank Airlines gave yield management its name and has called it "the single most vital technical development in transportation management since we entered deregulation."