关键词: 服务质量, 信息披露策略, 排队管理, 不确定型决策

Abstract: In the service industry, service quality is an important factor in determining customers’ willingness to pay and enterprises’ profits. However, due to the intangible nature of service products, the service quality information held by enterprises and customers is asymmetrical, for enterprises can obtain accurate service quality information through customer feedback, survey, expert evaluation, market data and other ways, while customers lack resources and channels to obtain such information, unless enterprises disclose service quality information. When the enterprise does not disclose the relevant service quality information and customers face uncertain service quality, different customer groups usually have different psychological characteristics and adopt different decision-making schemes according to their own preferences. In view of the above background, this paper focuses on the following issues. When enterprises hide the information of service quality, how can customers make decisions with uncertain decision criteria and how can enterprises reasonably set service price? How do enterprises develop service quality disclosure strategies to maximize service revenue?
   In order to study how the uncertain decision made by customers affects the choice of service quality information disclosure strategy in the face of the uncertainty of service quality, this paper takes an M/G/1 queue as the background, by establishing the customer service utility function and the enterprise service revenue function under the two strategies of whether the service quality information is disclosed or not. We first assume that when enterprises disclose the service quality information, customers can obtain service quality information before making decisions, and there is no difference among all customers. When enterprises hide the service quality information, there are two types of customers in the queue: optimistic customers and pessimistic customers. In the face of uncertain service quality, optimistic customers adopt the risk criterion, while pessimistic customers adopt the conservative criterion, where the decision maker who applies the risk criterion (conservative criterion) must first determine the maximum (small) return value that each alternative scheme may lead to, and then compare the maximum (small) return value of these alternative schemes. Then the largest one is selected, and the alternative corresponding to this maximum value is the decision maker’s final choice. Based on the above assumptions, by using the queuing-game theory, the paper analyzes the related influencing factors leading to the change in the equilibrium strategies of customers and service pricing decisions of enterprises, and discusses the impact of service quality information disclosure on the enterprises’ revenue.
   The results show that, first, if pessimistic customers adopt the “all balk” strategy, optimistic customers will adopt either the “all join” strategy or a “mixed strategy”. If pessimistic customers adopt a “mixed strategy”, optimistic customers will adopt the “all join” strategy. Under the two strategies of whether the service quality information is disclosed or not, the enterprise throughput decreases with an increase in service price. In addition, when the service price is small, the disclosure of service quality information can improve the enterprise throughput, and vice versa. Second, if the service quality and the proportion of optimistic customers in the arriving population increase, the strategy of disclosing service quality information cannot always obtain a large optimal service price and service revenue. When the service quality information is hidden, the optimal service price is discontinuous in terms of the proportion of optimistic customers in the arriving population, but there is a jump point. When the proportion of optimistic customers is greater than the jump point, the optimal service price tends to decrease. Third, when the proportion of optimistic customers in the arriving population is relatively small, enterprises should always adopt the strategy of disclosing service quality information. As long as the proportion of optimistic customers in the arriving population exceeds a certain value, higher service revenue can be obtained by choosing to hide service quality information.

Key words: service quality, information disclosure strategy, queuing management, uncertain decision