We consider a firm selling a fixed amount of inventory to customers who possess uncertain valuations on a product prior to purchase and realize their complete valuations only after purchase. The firm determines the returns policies over two periods; each of which targets for a group of brand loyal customers or regular shoppers. The customers are strategic, taking into account both the product a...

the increasing use of internet leads to the expansion of electronic exchange. customers are trying to take advantage of this situation in different ways. one of their main concerns is the lack of sufficient trust toward the other side. in other words, they are afraid of the probable damage of these kinds of online bargains. for example their potential fears of fraud. maybe the perceived fraud i...

One of the recent strategies for increasing the customer’s loyalty in banking industry is the use of customers’ club system. In this system, customers receive scores on the basis of financial and club activities they are performing, and due to the achieved points, they get credits from the bank. In addition, by the advent of new technologies, fraud is growing in banking domain as well. Therefor...

The issue of language barriers is particularly critical during intercultural service encounters for ESL (English as a Second Language) customers. Customers may struggle to communicate what they want or even get necessary information regarding products or services. Through a qualitative study, based on a grounded theory approach, this study identifies issues that concern ESL customers in intercu...

This paper studies the operating characteristics of an MX/Hk/1 queueing system under multiple vacation policy. It is assumed that the server goes for vacation as soon as the system becomes empty. When he returns from a vacation and there is one or more customers waiting in the queue, he serves these customers until the system becomes empty again, otherwise goes for another vacation. The brea...

One of the major issues banks are faced with in providing Internet Banking (IB) services is the adoption of these services by the customers. This study seeks answer to the question that whether bank customers’ awareness of the services and advantages of IB is effective in reducing the negative effect of customers’ perceived risk on their intention of IB adoption. To this end, the two constructs...

In this paper we consider a single-server polling system with switch-over times. We introduce a new service discipline, mixed gated/exhaustive service, that can be used for queues with two types of customers: high and low priority customers. At the beginning of a visit of the server to such a queue, a gate is set behind all customers. High priority customers receive priority in the sense that t...

Queueing Systems with Customer Abandonments and Retrials by Song Deng Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering Industrial Engineering & Operations Research University of California, Berkeley Assistant Professor Ying-Ju Chen , Co-chair Professor Zuo-Jun “Max” Shen , Co-chair In queueing theory, the phenomenon that customers get impatient and renege from the system when the waiting time exceeds their ...