Pricing and setup/closedown policies in unobservable queues with strategic customers

Abstract

In this paper we study unobservable Markovian queueing systems with three types of setup/closedown policies: interruptible, skippable and insusceptible setup/closedown policies, respectively. For a system with the interruptible setup/closedown policy, service starts as soon as a customer arrives during a closedown time; However, for a system with the skippable setup/closedown policy, customers arriving in a closedown time (if any) can be served only after the closedown time finishes and the following setup time can be skipped; Then for a system with the insusceptible setup/closedown policy, customers arriving in a closedown time can’t be served until the following setup time finishes. We assume that customers need a price for service, and derive the equilibrium and socially optimal balking strategies for customers as well as the maximal social welfare. Then we make pricing control to motivate customers to adopt the optimal strategies and obtain an appropriate price that also maximizes server’s profit. Moreover, we numerically make some comparisons between the various performance measures.