Most common queueing models used for service system design assume the servers work at fixed (possibly heterogeneous) rates. However, real-life service systems are staffed by people, and people may change their service speed in response to incentives. The delicacy is that the resulting service...

Motivated by the growing significance of contingent free shipping (CFS) policies in the e-commerce industry, we investigate the optimal CFS and pricing decisions for online retailers. Under a CFS policy, consumers enjoy free shipping for orders exceeding a certain threshold value; otherwise, they...

This paper studies probabilistic selling with vertically differentiated products when firms compete and consumers anticipate the potential post-purchase regret raised by possibly obtaining the inferior products. Intuitively, anticipated regret hurts the attractiveness of probabilistic selling....

We consider a ride-hailing platform that provides free information to taxi drivers. Upon receiving a rider's request, the platform broadcasts the rider's origin and destination to idle drivers, who accept or ignore the request depending on the profitability considerations. We show that providing...

We study advance selling and upgrading in a priority queue setting that emerges in the amusement park industry. Customers choose to buy fast-track or regular tickets depending on their heterogeneous waiting costs. At the park entrance, customers can choose tickets based on the observed...