Modeling Customer Reactions to Congestion in Competitive Service Facilities

Mohammad Saidi-Mehrabad, Ebrahim Teimory, Ali Pahlavani

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DOI: 10.4236/jssm.2010.32024                

Abstract

This paper reviews classic approaches for modeling customers’ choice behavior in competitive facility planning problems. They are either deterministic or probabilistic and work by a utility function based on some factors whether customer-independent or dependent. This paper focuses especially on congestion, the most important factor in customer to service or fixed-server systems. Various behaviors which customers may divulge when they face with a congested facility are extensively studied. We also define a new congestion-sensitivity reaction which has not been considered in the literature. Relevant modeling approaches are proposed to formulate customers-sensitivity to congestion. An illustrative example is also given to analyze and compare the proposed approaches.

Keywords

Competitive Planning Models, Customers’ Choice Behavior, Congestion, Waiting Time

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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