Comparisons of Perceptions and Behavior in Ticket Queues and Physical Queues

Abstract

Ticket queues are systems that issue tickets to customers upon their arrival. Although ticket queues are preferred by many service providers, there is limited research on ticket queues, especially on customer perceptions of, preferences for, and behavior in these systems. We conducted a series of surveys to understand customer preferences and patience in a ticket queue and a physical queue (stand-in-line system) and to investigate whether the assumptions used in analytical queuing models for customer abandonment behavior are realistic. Study results indicate that subjects generally prefer ticket queues over physical queues and have greater patience in ticket queues than they do in physical queues. In addition, we observe that subjects are willing to wait longer than they initially were, assuming that they already have spent some time waiting in line. Using the survey results, we ran a series of simulation models by adjusting the traditional queuing assumptions and showed the impact of customer behavior on system performance measures in ticket and physical queues. Our results can assist managers, in determining the type of queue to implement under various service settings, and researchers, in modeling more realistic queuing systems.

Bayesian modeling of abandonments in ticket queues

“…The first states that customers become more patient while waiting; that is, the longer they wait, the more willing they are to stay until they receive service. This is described as the sunk‐cost effect in the literature (eg, Kuzu, ; Yu et al, ). The second view argues that the waiting time frustrates customers, making them impatient and leading to a higher abandonment probability for longer waits.…”

“…Xu, Gao, and Ou () analyze a single‐server TQ (in which customers abandon only by balking), and find that service completion rates in TQs can be much lower than those of physical (stand‐in‐line) queues. Kuzu () extends this work to multiserver TQs with both forms of abandonment (balking and reneging) using Markov chain models. The results of a survey conducted by Kuzu () show that customers are willing to wait longer in TQs than they do in physical queues.…”

“…Kuzu (2010) extends this work to multiserver TQs with both forms of abandonment (balking and reneging) using Markov chain models. The results of a survey conducted by Kuzu (2015) show that customers are willing to wait longer in TQs than they do in physical queues. Ding, Ou, and Ang (2015) develop an approximation procedure to calculate the percentage of customers who renege in single-server TQs, which they then extend to include multi-server systems.…”

The Effect of Queuing Technology on Customer Experience in Physical Retail Environments

“…Those systems apply to so-called "invisible" queues, in which people are not standing in line one behind another [8]. A more recent study has shown that customers prefer invisible ticket queues above physical queues [9]. The development of information systems (IS) entails that firms increasingly provide technologies, such as self-service technology (SST), which have been introduced widely in retail environments [10].…”

Switching queues, cultural conventions, and social welfare

“…Song et al (2015) and Shunko et al (2015) investigate how the architecture of queues (for example, having a single queue compared to having parallel queues) affects the performance of related workers such as cashiers. Kuzu (2015) investigates customer preferences and their perceptions of ticketed queues compared with standard, physical queues. 4 Hassin and Haviv (2003) present an extensive overview of the development of general queue theories.…”