Price and Service Discrimination in Queueing Systems: Incentive-Compatibility of Gcμ Scheduling

MANAGEMENT SCIENCE 2000 INFORMS Vol. 46, No. 9, September 2000 pp. 1249--1267

19 Pages Posted: 7 Jun 2016

Date Written: September 2000

Abstract

This article studies the optimal prices and service quality grades that a queuing system --- the "firm” --- provides to heterogeneous, utility-maximizing customers who measure quality by their experienced delay distributions. Results are threefold: First, delay cost curves are introduced that allow for a flexible description of a customer’s quality sensitivity. Second, a comprehensive executable approach is proposed that analytically specifies scheduling, delay distributions and prices for arbitrary delay sensitivity curves. The tractability of this approach derives from porting heavy-traffic Brownian results into the economic analysis. The generalized cμ (Gcμ) scheduling rule that emerges is dynamic so that, in general, service grades need not correspond to a static priority ranking. A benchmarking example investigates the value of differentiated service. Third, the notions of grade and rate incentive compatibility (IC) are introduced to study this system under asymmetric information and are established for Gcμ scheduling when service times are homogeneous and customers atomistic. Grade IC induces correct grade choice resulting in perfect service discrimination; rate IC additionally induces centralized-optimal rates. Dynamic Gcμ scheduling exhibits negative feedback that, together with time-dependent pricing, can also yield rate incentive compatibility with heterogeneous service times. Finally, multiplan pricing, which offers all customers a menu with a choice of multiple rate plans, is analyzed.

Keywords: Pricing; Quality of Service (QoS); Differentiation; Queuing; Incentive Compatibility; Asymmetric Information; Delay Costs; Scheduling; Dynamic Priority; Generalized cμ Rule; Threshold Rules

Suggested Citation

Van Mieghem, Jan Albert, Price and Service Discrimination in Queueing Systems: Incentive-Compatibility of Gcμ Scheduling (September 2000). MANAGEMENT SCIENCE 2000 INFORMS Vol. 46, No. 9, September 2000 pp. 1249--1267, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2790975

Jan Albert Van Mieghem (Contact Author)

Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management ( email )

2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
United States

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