基于异质性顾客心理期望等待时间的优先权服务定价研究

Priority Pricing Based on the Expected Waiting Time for Heterogeneous Customers

本文以非抢占式M/M/1排队系统为背景,以企业收益最大化为目标,基于顾客异质性(单位时间等待成本不同)将顾客分为两类,针对顾客的心理期望等待时间对服务提供商最优定价策略的影响进行研究。首先研究优先权顾客心理期望等待时间对企业收益的影响以及相应的优先权定价,然后研究优先权顾客和普通顾客同时存在心理期望等待时间对企业收益的影响和相应的优先权定价。研究表明:仅考虑优先权顾客的心理期望等待时间,企业应通过提高优先权定价来获得最优收益;当优先权顾客和普通顾客同时存在心理期望等待时间时,企业仍然采取提高优先权定价的策略,若普通顾客的价值大(获取服务的基本费用大),企业应对普通顾客提供一定的折扣来消除其心理期望等待时间增加企业收益;如果普通顾客的价值较小,企业应"有意"流失部分普通顾客,吸引更多顾客到优先权队列获取服务来获得更多收益。本文研究对于服务提供商在考虑顾客心理期望等待时间基础上设置最合理的队列机制有一定的指导意义和实际应用价值。

Due to customer heterogeneity(waiting costs per unit time are different), service providers usually introduce classification service to customers. However, when customers choose to enter a queuing system, they tend to have an expectation on waiting time in psychology, which will influence customers’ behavioral and lead to the flow of customers in the queuing system, which will affect the revenue of service providers. In this paper, the customer heterogeneity and classification service based on a stylized non-preemptive M/M/1 system are considered, and the priority pricing for maximizing the revenue of service provider is studied when customers have expectation on waiting time. First, the impact of the expectation waiting time of the priority customer is analyzed on the revenue and the corresponding priority pricing, and then the influence of the expectation waiting times of both the priority customers and the regular customers is studied on revenue and the related priority pricing. The findings of this paper are as follows: When only priority customers hold an expectation waiting time in queuing, the service providers should increase the priority pricing based on the expectation waiting time of the priority customer to achieve more revenue. When both the priority customers and the regular customers hold an expectation waiting time in queuing, the service providers still should enhance the priority pricing based on the expectation waiting time of the priority customer to increase revenue. However, if the basic fee for regular customers to obtain service is small or the service provider pays more attention to the revenue of one-time consumption by customers, then the service provider should reduce the proportion of regular customers and increase the proportion of priority customers in the system by utilizing the expectation waiting time of regular customers for getting more revenue;if the basic fee for regular customers to obtain services is high, the service provider pays more attention to the revenue of multiple consumption by regular customers or the service providers value regular customers, then the expectation waiting time of regular customers causes corporate revenue to continue to decline. At this time, if the service provider can adopt a discount strategy(certain discount strength) for high-value regular customers, and improve their satisfaction, and eliminate their psychological expectation of waiting time, it can further increase the revenue. The findings provide significant and practical insights for service providers who value the expected waiting time of customers in service pricing.