Fall 2011 Seminar Series

DATE: November 3rd
LOCATION: E62-550
TIME: 4:15pm
Reception immediately following

SPEAKER:
Sampath Rajagopalan

TITLE
Pricing and Operational Performance in Discretionary Services

ABSTRACT
In discretionary services, the value or quality derived by a customer from a service depends upon the time the service provider (SP) devotes to the customer and the valuation differs across customers. We identify the optimal pricing scheme and explore the impact of two widely used pricing schemes, time-based billing and fixed fee, on many dimensions of service performance including SP's profitability, demand, utilization, and congestion level.