[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v65y2019i2p735-750.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Strategic Open Routing in Service Networks

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandro Arlotto

    (Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708)

  • Andrew E. Frazelle

    (Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708)

  • Yehua Wei

    (Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467)

Abstract
We study the behavior of strategic customers in an open-routing service network with multiple stations. When a customer enters the network, she is free to choose the sequence of stations that she visits, with the objective of minimizing her expected total system time. We propose a two-station game with all customers present at the start of service and deterministic service times, and we find that strategic customers “herd,” that is, in equilibrium all customers choose the same route. For unobservable systems, we prove that the game is supermodular, and we then identify a broad class of learning rules—which includes both fictitious play and Cournot best response—that converges to herding in finite time. By combining different theoretical and numerical analyses, we find that the herding behavior is prevalent in many other congested open-routing service networks, including those with arrivals over time, those with stochastic service times, and those with more than two stations. We also find that the system under herding performs very close to the first-best outcome in terms of cumulative system time.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandro Arlotto & Andrew E. Frazelle & Yehua Wei, 2019. "Strategic Open Routing in Service Networks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 735-750, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:65:y:2019:i:2:p:735-750
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2017.2971
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2971
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2971?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David, 1998. "Learning in games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 631-639, May.
    2. Philipp Afèche & Haim Mendelson, 2004. "Pricing and Priority Auctions in Queueing Systems with a Generalized Delay Cost Structure," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(7), pages 869-882, July.
    3. Senthil Veeraraghavan & Laurens Debo, 2009. "Joining Longer Queues: Information Externalities in Queue Choice," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(4), pages 543-562, April.
    4. Harsha Honnappa & Rahul Jain, 2015. "Strategic Arrivals into Queueing Networks: The Network Concert Queueing Game," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 63(1), pages 247-259, February.
    5. Michal Feldman & Tami Tamir, 2012. "Conflicting Congestion Effects in Resource Allocation Games," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(3), pages 529-540, June.
    6. Shiliang Cui & Senthil Veeraraghavan, 2016. "Blind Queues: The Impact of Consumer Beliefs on Revenues and Congestion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3656-3672, December.
    7. Glazer, Amihai & Hassin, Refael, 1983. "?/M/1: On the equilibrium distribution of customer arrivals," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 146-150, June.
    8. Laurens Debo & Senthil Veeraraghavan, 2014. "Equilibrium in Queues Under Unknown Service Times and Service Value," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 38-57, February.
    9. Ali K. Parlaktürk & Sunil Kumar, 2004. "Self-Interested Routing in Queueing Networks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(7), pages 949-966, July.
    10. I. Adiri & U. Yechiali, 1974. "Optimal Priority-Purchasing and Pricing Decisions in Nonmonopoly and Monopoly Queues," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(5), pages 1051-1066, October.
    11. Senthil K. Veeraraghavan & Laurens G. Debo, 2011. "Herding in Queues with Waiting Costs: Rationality and Regret," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 329-346, July.
    12. Xuanming Su & Stefanos Zenios, 2004. "Patient Choice in Kidney Allocation: The Role of the Queueing Discipline," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 6(4), pages 280-301, June.
    13. Drew Fudenberg & David K. Levine, 1998. "The Theory of Learning in Games," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061945, April.
    14. Naor, P, 1969. "The Regulation of Queue Size by Levying Tolls," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(1), pages 15-24, January.
    15. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1990. "Rationalizability, Learning, and Equilibrium in Games with Strategic Complementarities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1255-1277, November.
    16. Parlakturk, Ali & Kumar, Sunil, 2004. "Self-Interested Routing in Queueing Networks," Research Papers 1782r, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liron Ravner & Yutaka Sakuma, 2021. "Strategic arrivals to a queue with service rate uncertainty," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 303-341, April.
    2. Ming Hu & Yang Li & Jianfu Wang, 2018. "Efficient Ignorance: Information Heterogeneity in a Queue," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 2650-2671, June.
    3. Dimitrios Logothetis & Antonis Economou, 2023. "The impact of information on transportation systems with strategic customers," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(7), pages 2189-2206, July.
    4. Pengfei Guo & Moshe Haviv & Zhenwei Luo & Yulan Wang, 2022. "Optimal queue length information disclosure when service quality is uncertain," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(5), pages 1912-1927, May.
    5. Wang, Haiyan & Olsen, Tava Lennon & Liu, Guiqing, 2018. "Service capacity competition with peak arrivals and delay sensitive customers," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 80-95.
    6. Manlu Chen & Ming Hu & Jianfu Wang, 2022. "Food Delivery Service and Restaurant: Friend or Foe?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(9), pages 6539-6551, September.
    7. Zhao, Chen & Wang, Zhongbin, 2023. "The impact of line-sitting on a two-server queueing system," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(2), pages 782-800.
    8. Qiao‐Chu He & Ying‐Ju Chen & Rhonda Righter, 2020. "Learning with Projection Effects in Service Operations Systems," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(1), pages 90-100, January.
    9. David Barbato & Alberto Cesaro & Bernardo D’Auria, 2024. "Equilibrium Strategies for Overtaking-Free Queueing Networks under Partial Information," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-17, September.
    10. Hassin, Refael & Roet-Green, Ricky, 2018. "Cascade equilibrium strategies in a two-server queueing system with inspection cost," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 267(3), pages 1014-1026.
    11. Laurens Debo & Uday Rajan & Senthil K. Veeraraghavan, 2020. "Signaling Quality via Long Lines and Uninformative Prices," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 22(3), pages 513-527, May.
    12. Luyi Yang & Laurens G. Debo & Varun Gupta, 2019. "Search Among Queues Under Quality Differentiation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(8), pages 3605-3623, August.
    13. Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu & Jan A. Van Mieghem & R. Canan Savaskan, 2009. "Incentives for Quality Through Endogenous Routing," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(2), pages 254-273, July.
    14. Federico Echenique, 2003. "Mixed equilibria in games of strategic complementarities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 22(1), pages 33-44, August.
    15. Schipper, Burkhard C, 2011. "Strategic control of myopic best reply in repeated games," MPRA Paper 30219, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Vasiliki Kostami & Dimitris Kostamis & Serhan Ziya, 2017. "Pricing and Capacity Allocation for Shared Services," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 19(2), pages 230-245, May.
    17. Yan Chen & Robert Gazzale, 2004. "When Does Learning in Games Generate Convergence to Nash Equilibria? The Role of Supermodularity in an Experimental Setting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1505-1535, December.
    18. Hofbauer,J. & Sandholm,W.H., 2001. "Evolution and learning in games with randomly disturbed payoffs," Working papers 5, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    19. Hofbauer,J. & Sandholm,W.H., 2001. "Evolution and learning in games with randomly disturbed payoffs," Working papers 5, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    20. Burkhard C. Schipper, 2022. "Strategic Teaching and Learning in Games," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 321-352, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:65:y:2019:i:2:p:735-750. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.