基于顾客等待厌恶的会员制排队服务设计与差异化定价研究

Research on service design and differential pricing of membership-based queuing service based on customers delaying aversion

设计合理的服务机制以及制定完善的服务定价策略对于企业的发展至关重要,服务提供商通过设计合理的服务策略可以获得最优的服务收益。在会员制排队服务中,通常会存在会员顾客和非会员顾客两类顾客,服务非会员顾客势必会增加会员顾客的排队等待时间,进而引发会员顾客等待厌恶的心理。因此,本文以会员制排队服务为研究背景,针对市场中存在的会员顾客和非会员顾客,在服务提供商对两类顾客实施差异化定价时,研究会员顾客等待厌恶心理对服务提供商服务策略和服务定价的影响。结果表明,当会员顾客等待厌恶程度较小或适中时,服务提供商可以同时服务非会员顾客和会员顾客;当会员顾客等待厌恶程度较大时,服务提供商应该只服务会员顾客。此外,随着等待厌恶程度的增大,会员顾客的最优定价会先减小后增大,非会员顾客的最优定价会先保持不变后逐渐增大。本文的研究对于会员制服务提供商服务策略和服务价格的设定具有一定的指导作用和应用价值。

Designing a reasonable service mechanism and formulating a complete service pricing strategy are essential to the sustainable development of an enterprise if it is to obtain the best service.Membership service is a service mechanism by which customers voluntarily join as members,enabling the organization to have long-term interactions with them.By providing member customers with various membership services(such as priority services)and preferential strategies,customer loyalty can be continually increased while obtaining service revenue.In membership-based queuing services,there are two types of customers:members and non-members.Serving non-member customers will increase the waiting time for member customers,which could incur aversion to delay in member customers.Moreover,member customers′aversion to delay will inevitably affect the average utility of customers and will further affect the service provider′s setting of service strategies and service prices.Therefore,the question of how member customers′aversion to delay affects the service provider′s service strategy and pricing mechanism is a real problem that urgently needs to be solved.Based on the current literature on membership queuing services,and by introducing the non-preemptive M/M/1 priority queuing model,this paper considers the two types of customers(members and non-members)in the market and studies the impact of member customers′aversion to delay on service strategy and service pricing when the service provider implements differential pricing for member vs.nonmember customers.We first posit that the service provider can provide two service strategies,namely strategy 1:serve only member customers,and strategy 2:serve both member and non-member customers.Furthermore,we posit that in either strategy,the service provider will ensure that all member customers can receive the service.In addition,we assume that the unit delay cost for member and non-member customers is uniformly distributed and that the service provider implements differential pricing for the two types of customers.When the service provider adopts strategy 1,there are no non-member customers involved,and thus member customers will not experience aversion to delay.The system in this case is a normal M/M/1 queuing system.When the service provider adopts strategy 2,member customers have higher service priority than non-member customers.However,the presence of non-member customers will increase the waiting time of member customers,and member customers will experience aversion to delay.The system in this case is a non-preemptive M/M/1 priority queuing system.We next construct the customer utility model and the enterprise revenue model,respectively,under the two strategies.For cases in which the service provider guarantees that all member customers are served,we analyze the impact of member customers′aversion to delay on the optimal non-member customer service ratio,the optimal revenue of the service provider,and the optimal pricing of the two types of customers.In addition,the best service strategies for the service provider under the different degrees of member customers′aversion to delay are also given.Finally,the conclusions are presented and further verified and analyzed by numerical examples.The results show that,first,when member customers have a low degree of aversion to delay,the service provider can serve all member and non-member customers.When member customers have a moderate degree of aversion to delay,the service provider should serve all member customers and some non-member customers.When member customers’aversion to delay is great,the service provider should only serve member customers.Therefore,based on the above analysis,when member customers have a low or moderate degree of aversion to delay,the service provider’s optimal strategy is to adopt strategy 2,whereas when member customers’aversion to delay is great,the optimal strategy of the service provider is to adopt strategy 1.Second,when the service provider adopts strategy 2,it is the case that as member customers’aversion to delay increases,the optimal pricing for member customers will first decrease and then increase,and the optimal pricing for non-member customers will first remain unchanged and then gradually increase.When the service provider adopts strategy 1,the optimal pricing for member customers will remain unchanged.Finally,as member customers’aversion to delay increases,the optimal profit of the service provider will gradually decrease.Therefore,in actual service operation,the service provider can set up movie screens,provide newspaper reading services,play music,or provide pre-service and additional services to member customers to reduce their aversion to delay,so as to increase service revenue by serving more non-member customers.The research in this paper can guide service providers to set reasonable service strategies and service prices.It also has guiding function and application value for service providers to improve the loyalty of member customers and maintain the healthy development of their enterprises.