In-queue priority purchase: a dynamic game approach

Abstract Pay-for-priority is a common practice in congestion-prone service systems. The extant literature on this topic restricts attention to the case where only epoch for customers purchase priority upon arrival , and if choose not upgrade when they arrive, cannot do so later during their wait. A natural alternative let pay at any time stay queue, even initially. This paper builds queueing-game-theoretic model that explicitly captures self-interested customers’ dynamic in-queue priority-purchasing behavior. When all (who have upgraded yet) simultaneously decide whether upgrade, we find our pure-strategy equilibria exist under some intuitive criteria, contrasting findings classical models can arrival. However, sequentially threshold-type may exist. In particular, sufficiently light traffic, number of ordinary accumulates certain threshold, then it always second last customer who upgrades, but general, could be from another position, queue-length threshold triggers an also vary with traffic intensity. Finally, subject sequential rule yields less revenue than upon-arrival systems small buffers.