دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تاثیر زمان انتظار رستوران بر رفتار و درآمد مشتری - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

In many service industries, customers have to wait for service. When customers have a choice, this waiting may influence their service experience, sojourn time, and ultimately spending, reneging, and return behavior. Not much is known however, about the system-wide impact of waiting on customer behavior and resulting revenue. In this paper, we empirically investigate this by analyzing data obtained from 94,404 customers visiting a popular Indian restaurant during a 12 month period. The results show that a longer waiting time relates to reneging behavior, a longer time until a customer returns, and a shorter dining duration. To find out the impact of the consequences of waiting time, we use the empirical findings and data collected in a simulation experiment. This experiment shows that, without waiting, the total revenue generated by the restaurant would increase by nearly 15% compared to the current situation. Stimulating customers to reserve could enable restaurants to reap part of this benefit. Furthermore, the results of simulation experiments suggest that, within the boundaries of the current capacity, revenue could be increased by a maximum of 7.5% if more flexible rules were used to allocate customers to tables. Alternatively, by increasing the existing seating capacity by 20%, revenue could be boosted by 7.7% without the need to attract additional customers. Our findings extend the knowledge on the consequences of customer waiting, and enable service providers to better understand the financial and operational impact of waiting-related decisions in service settings.

 Conclusions and discussion

Research on longer-term consequences of waiting on performance in service environments is scarce. This does not do justice to the relevance of the topic for customers and businesses, which emphasizes the need for more research in this direction. The current study makes a unique contribution by combining empirical research on consequences of waiting with a simulation model that shows the effects on customer visits and revenue. Using only empirical models, we addressed RQ1 by drawing relationships from historical data and showing how waiting time affects return behavior, reneging behavior, and dining duration. Likewise, by only using the simulation model, we could have observed the effect of fixed parameter setting (with a distribution of dining times) and a fixed arrival stream of customers on the customer waiting time. However, our integrated approach enabled us to combine exogenous and endogenous arrivals, to handle effects that are non-linear and non-stationary, and to incorporate (higher-order) time-varying interactions. More specifically, to identify the dynamic consequences of the combined empirically identified effects of waiting time, as included in RQ2, we analyzed the effect of customer- and time-varying parameter setting on revenue outcomes of the restaurant. This integrated simulation model considers the empirical relationships such as the waiting time effects on dining duration and reneging probability (through established relationships), along with other dynamic interactions. The empirical relationships guided the parameter settings in the simulation. While the isolated models (empirical and simulation) are instrumental in capturing partial system effects, the integrated model captures the system-wide effects in a more comprehensive manner. The resulting comprehensive model also allowed us to explore the impact of specific operational strategies on restaurant revenues, as posed in RQ3. The results provide several important practical as well as theoretical implications.