[article]
Titre : |
Signaling quality via queues |
Type de document : |
texte imprimé |
Auteurs : |
Laurens G. Debo, Auteur ; Christine Parlour, Auteur ; Uday Rajan, Auteur |
Année de publication : |
2012 |
Article en page(s) : |
pp. 876-891 |
Note générale : |
Management |
Langues : |
Anglais (eng) |
Mots-clés : |
Games–group decisions Stochastic Probability model applications Queues Birth–death |
Résumé : |
We consider an M/M/1 queueing system with impatient consumers who observe the length of the queue before deciding whether to buy the product. The product may have high or low quality, and consumers are heterogeneously informed. The firm chooses a slow or (at a cost) a fast service rate. In equilibrium, informed consumers join the queue if it is below a threshold. The threshold varies with the quality of the good, so an uninformed consumer updates her belief about quality on observing the length of the queue. The strategy of an uninformed consumer has a “hole”: she joins the queue at lengths both below and above the hole, but not at the hole itself. We show that if the prior probability the product has high quality and the proportion of informed consumers are both low, a high-quality firm may select a slower service rate than a low-quality firm. The queue can therefore be a valuable signaling device for a high-quality firm. Strikingly, in some scenarios, the high-quality firm may choose the slow service rate even if the technological cost of speeding up is zero. |
DEWEY : |
658 |
ISSN : |
0025-1909 |
En ligne : |
http://mansci.journal.informs.org/content/58/5/876.abstract |
in Management science > Vol. 58 N° 5 (Mai 2012) . - pp. 876-891
[article] Signaling quality via queues [texte imprimé] / Laurens G. Debo, Auteur ; Christine Parlour, Auteur ; Uday Rajan, Auteur . - 2012 . - pp. 876-891. Management Langues : Anglais ( eng) in Management science > Vol. 58 N° 5 (Mai 2012) . - pp. 876-891
Mots-clés : |
Games–group decisions Stochastic Probability model applications Queues Birth–death |
Résumé : |
We consider an M/M/1 queueing system with impatient consumers who observe the length of the queue before deciding whether to buy the product. The product may have high or low quality, and consumers are heterogeneously informed. The firm chooses a slow or (at a cost) a fast service rate. In equilibrium, informed consumers join the queue if it is below a threshold. The threshold varies with the quality of the good, so an uninformed consumer updates her belief about quality on observing the length of the queue. The strategy of an uninformed consumer has a “hole”: she joins the queue at lengths both below and above the hole, but not at the hole itself. We show that if the prior probability the product has high quality and the proportion of informed consumers are both low, a high-quality firm may select a slower service rate than a low-quality firm. The queue can therefore be a valuable signaling device for a high-quality firm. Strikingly, in some scenarios, the high-quality firm may choose the slow service rate even if the technological cost of speeding up is zero. |
DEWEY : |
658 |
ISSN : |
0025-1909 |
En ligne : |
http://mansci.journal.informs.org/content/58/5/876.abstract |
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