A PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON SERVICE SEGMENTATION MODELS - THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ACCOUNTING FOR CONSUMERS PERCEPTIONS OF WAITING AND SERVICE

We examine how service should be divided and scheduled when it can be provided in multiple separate segments. We analyze variants of this pr oblem using a model with a conventional function describing the waitin g cost, that is modified to account for some aspects of the psychologi cal cost of waiting in line. We show that consideration of the psychol ogical cost can result in prescriptions that are inconsistent with the common wisdom of queuing theorists derived according to the conventio nal approach (e.g., equal load assignments). More generally, our inten tion in this paper is to illustrate that aspects of the psychological cost of waiting can be accounted for in the analysis of queuing system s, and that this may have significant implications for the service sch emes that are derived.