基于顾客心理期望等待时间的服务策略研究

顾客在排队系统获取服务时，会存在心理上的期望等待时间，该期望会影响顾客在排队系统中的行为变化和流动，从而影响企业收益。本文以传统的M/M/1排队系统为背景，基于顾客存在期望等待时间的前提下，以企业收益最大化为优化目标进行研究。首先，对相应基础理论和模型假设进行介绍；其次，对顾客存在心理期望等待时间情形提出三种新的策略：重新定价、通过折扣对顾客期望值进行调整、提高服务率；然后，分别对上述三种策略进行优化分析，并同现有结果进行比较；研究表明：三种策略都比维持原有定价带来更大收益；当折扣力度较小时或顾客对费用感知强于时间感知时，折扣策略优于重新定价策略；当折扣力度较大或顾客对时间感知强于费用感知时，重新定价策略优于折扣策略；最后，通过对最优结果分析提出相应管理启示。本文的研究对于顾客存在心理期望等待时间的服务定价具有重要的指导意义和实际应用价值。

Service Strategy Based on Expected Waiting Time of Customers in Queuing System

With the improvement of people's living standard, time becomes more and more important. However, queuing may waste a lot of people's time. Existed researches show that customers tend to have an expectation on waiting time when they choose to enter a queuing system for service. If their actual waiting time exceed to their expectation, they will choose to leave or abandon the service. Therefore, the expectation of customers on waiting time will influence customers' behaviors and lead to the flow of customers in queuing system, then affecting the revenue of service provider. In this paper, three strategies are proposed to address this problem based on a stylized M/M/1 system. First and foremost, the related basic theory (i.e. the expected waiting time is not considered) of service pricing is introduced. Then, providing three new strategies by incorporating the expected waiting time of customers: update pricing according to the customers' expectation on waiting time, adjusting the customer expectation by discounting, and improving service rate without changing original price. Later on, the above three strategies are optimized and analyzed based on the optimization of revenue. Further, the corresponding optimal results are compared with existing works, respectively. Finally, the corresponding management insights are proposed based on the analysis of optimal results. The findings of this paper are as follows: When customers hold an expected waiting time in queuing, the service provider are inclined to make more revenue than maintaining the original pricing by adopting above three proposed strategies. If customers are sensitive to cost (i.e., moderate discount can effectively prolong the customers' expectation on waiting time), the discount strategy is better than the update pricing strategy. If perception of customers on time is stronger than the customers' perception on cost (i.e., moderate discount fail to effectively prolong the customers' expectation on waiting time), the update pricing strategy is better than the discount strategy. Obviously, when the cost of improving the service rate is low, service providers are bound to achieve the maximum revenue by improving the system service rate. This research shows important reference value and instructional significance for service providers who value the expected waiting time of customers in service pricing.