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The Impact of Delaying the Delay Announcements

Author

Listed:
  • Gad Allon

    (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208)

  • Achal Bassamboo

    (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208)

Abstract

Many service providers use delay announcements to inform customers of anticipated delays. However, this information is usually not provided immediately but after a short period of time (spent either waiting or occupied by the system). The focus of this paper is on the impact of this postponement on the ability of the firm to influence customer behavior by communicating nonverifiable congestion information to its customers, as well as on the profits and utilities for the firm and the customers, respectively. We show that this postponement can actually help the firm create credibility and augment the resulting equilibrium. However, in other settings this delay can also detract from the resulting equilibrium. Furthermore, we show that whenever credibility is created it improves not only the profit for the firm but also the customers' overall utility under certain settings.

Suggested Citation

  • Gad Allon & Achal Bassamboo, 2011. "The Impact of Delaying the Delay Announcements," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(5), pages 1198-1210, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:59:y:2011:i:5:p:1198-1210
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.1110.0972
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Nimrod Dvir & Refael Hassin & Uri Yechiali, 2020. "Strategic behaviour in a tandem queue with alternating server," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 96(3), pages 205-244, December.
    2. Brett A. Hathaway & Seyed M. Emadi & Vinayak Deshpande, 2021. "Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You: An Empirical Study of Caller Behavior Under a Callback Option," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(3), pages 1508-1526, March.
    3. Debjit Roy & Eirini Spiliotopoulou & Jelle de Vries, 2022. "Restaurant analytics: Emerging practice and research opportunities," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(10), pages 3687-3709, October.
    4. Otis B. Jennings & Jamol Pender, 2016. "Comparisons of ticket and standard queues," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 84(1), pages 145-202, October.
    5. Jamol Pender & Richard Rand & Elizabeth Wesson, 2020. "A Stochastic Analysis of Queues with Customer Choice and Delayed Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 45(3), pages 1104-1126, August.
    6. Ming Hu & Yang Li & Jianfu Wang, 2018. "Efficient Ignorance: Information Heterogeneity in a Queue," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 2650-2671, June.
    7. Kraig Delana & Nicos Savva & Tolga Tezcan, 2021. "Proactive Customer Service: Operational Benefits and Economic Frictions," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 70-87, 1-2.
    8. Qiuping Yu & Yiming Zhang & Yong-Pin Zhou, 2022. "Delay Information in Virtual Queues: A Large-Scale Field Experiment on a Major Ride-Sharing Platform," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(8), pages 5745-5757, August.
    9. Legros, Benjamin, 2021. "Routing analyses for call centers with human and automated services," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    10. Ryan W. Buell, 2017. "Last Place Aversion in Queues," Harvard Business School Working Papers 18-053, Harvard Business School, revised Oct 2019.
    11. Junfei Huang & Avishai Mandelbaum & Hanqin Zhang & Jiheng Zhang, 2017. "Refined Models for Efficiency-Driven Queues with Applications to Delay Announcements and Staffing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 65(5), pages 1380-1397, October.
    12. Benjamin Legros, 2021. "Routing analyses for call centers with human and automated services," Post-Print hal-03605426, HAL.
    13. Rouba Ibrahim, 2018. "Sharing delay information in service systems: a literature survey," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 89(1), pages 49-79, June.

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