Search results

AbstractThis article generalizes the models in Guo and Zipkin, who focus on exponential service times, to systems with phase‐type service times. Each arriving customer decides whether to stay or balk based on his expected waiting cost, conditional on the information provided. We show how to compute the throughput and customers' average utility in each case. We then obtain some analytical and numerical results to assess the effect of more or less information. We also show that service‐time variability degrades the system's performance. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008

AbstractWe consider price and capacity decisions for a profit‐maximizing service provider in a single server queueing system, in which customers are boundedly rational and decide whether to join the service according to a multinomial logit model. We find two potential price‐capacity pair solutions for the first‐order condition of the profit‐maximizing problem. Profit is maximized at the solution with a larger capacity, but minimized at the smaller one. We then consider a dynamically adjusting capacity system to mimic a real‐life situation and find that the maximum can be reached only when the initial service rate is larger than a certain threshold; otherwise, the system capacity and demand shrink to zero. We also find that a higher level of customers' bounded rationality does not necessarily benefit a firm, nor does it necessarily allow service to be sustained. We extend our analysis to a setting in which customers' bounded rationality level is related to historical demand and find that such a setting makes service easier to sustain. Finally we find that bounded rationality always harms social welfare.