We study the question of scheduling impatient customers in parallel server queuing systems. At the time of arrival, customers can be identified as one of many classes, where the class represents the service time and patience time distributions, and cost characteristics. From the system's...

We consider a setting in which consumers experience distinct instances of need for a durable product at random intervals. Each instance of need is associated with a random utility and the consumers are differentiated according to the frequency with which they experience such instances of need....

A core problem in the area of revenue management is pricing goods in the presence of strategic customers. We study this problem when customers are heterogeneous with respect to their initial valuations for the item and their time sensitivities, i.e., the customers differ in both their initial...

We consider a service firm that caters to price and delay sensitive customers by offering a menu of service grades. Each service grade is associated with posted price and delay. Noting that an optimal menu size could be quite large when there are many classes, we study whether the firm can offer...

Firms have more information than their customers about the availability of the product. Given the increase in the strategic nature of customers, who consider both prices with future availability risk in making their purchase decisions, the firm may be interested in communicating this information...

When managing congested service systems, it is common to use priority rules based on some operational criteria. In this paper, we consider the societal implications of such individual-focused priority policies, when individuals are considered as members of broader population groups. We find that...

Problem Definition: We study optimal scheduling of customers in service systems, such as call centers. In such systems, customers typically hang up and abandon the system if their wait for service is too long. Such abandonments are detrimental for the system, and so managers typically use...