| Abstract: | This paper presents a technique whereby a small business (i.e. a one-cash register operation) can reduce customer waiting-line time dissatisfaction in the purchase stage of the consumer decision process. When the queue length reaches or exceeds critical value N*, another employee is temporarily transferred to the role of ‘server assistant’ to increase the effective service rate; when the queue length eventually decreases to a second critical value N*, the server assistant returns to primary duties. An optimal customer-reneging decision model is utilized to model the reneging character of the queue. Simulation experiments confirm key hypotheses concerning the behaviour of the queue and compare the effectiveness of a computed (N*, N*) policy with that of alternatives. |
