Customer Behavior Analysis in Ticket Windows at Scenic Spots from Game-Theoretic Perspective

Abstract

In service industries, especially in some ticket windows at scenic spots, affected by congestion, some customers often find excuses or ask the acquaintances in the queue so as to jump the queue and complete their corresponding service as early as possible. In this paper, we model the queueing phenomenon in the ticket windows at scenic spots as a special queue, namely, the so-called “team queue.” Although this phenomenon often happens in daily life, it is less well known to people. In a team queue, an arriving customer first searches the queue from the top to bottom to see if some of his teammates are already in the queue. If yes, he would join the queue and be served with his teammates; otherwise, he would join the queue at the tail. To this end, arising from the customers’ perspective, the strategic behavior of queueing customers in the ticket windows at scenic spots is analyzed. On the basis of considering the waiting cost and reward, the individual strategies and social optimal strategies of queueing customers are derived, regarding the joining or balking dilemma and for the observable and unobservable cases. Finally, to demonstrate how various parameters affect the joining strategies, some numerical examples are provided.