报告题目 | The psychology of virtual queue: When waiting feels less like waiting | ||
报告人（单位） | Prof. Xun Xu (California State University, Dominguez Hills) | ||
点评人（单位） | 孙胜楠（东南大学） | 点评人（单位） | 薛巍立（东南大学） |
时间地点 | 2022.10.20 10:00，腾讯会议：135-662-602 | ||
报告摘要和内容：Customers typically judge a service's waiting based on their perception, which is often longer than the actual waiting time. Thus, managing perceived waiting time is key for service providers and leads to various psychology-based approaches, including a rising star – Virtual Queue (VQ). VQ allows customers to join a queue for services remotely through a mobile app or online portal and receive frequent updates about the remaining waiting time and queue position. In this research, we investigate the impact of VQ on customers' waiting complaints in two stages: the pre-process period (waiting before service) and the in-process period (waiting during service), and their overall satisfaction. We use a text mining approach based on deep learning to extract waiting complaints in the two stages from over 0.72 million online customer reviews covering major U.S. casual dining chain restaurants from February 2015 to February 2019. Then we conduct difference-in-differences regressions facilitated by propensity score matching to estimate the impact of VQ on customer complaints in the two waiting stages and overall satisfaction. We find that VQ reduces customers' pre-process waiting complaints and does not lead to positive spillover on in-process waiting complaints. VQ also enhances customers' overall satisfaction with the service. In addition, the impacts of VQ become effective from the first year of its implementation and remain unchanged afterward. We find that service providers who face high substitutability or offer low-value service are benefited most from VQ. Our study encourages service providers to implement VQ for managing customers' perceived pre-process waiting time without fearing backfire on in-process waiting. VQ also helps service providers generate positive word-of-mouth through improved customers' overall satisfaction reflected online. Judging based on a service's substitutability and value, service providers can determine whether to implement VQ in their best interest. | |||
报告人简介：Xun Xu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management in the College of Business Administration and Public Policy at California State University, Dominguez Hills, in the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Management from Washington State University, a master's degree from the Renmin University of China, and a bachelor's degree in Management Science from Fudan University. His research interests include service operations management, supply chain management and coordination, sustainability, e-commerce, data and text mining, and hospitality and tourism management. He has published over 60 papers in such journals as Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, and Omega. He is an ad-hoc reviewer for various journals such as Production and Operations Management and the Journal of Operations Management. | |||
