In many service industries, companies compete with each other on the basis of the waiting time their customers experience, along with other strategic instruments such as the price they charge for their service. The objective of this paper is to conduct an empirical study of an important industry...

We develop a model for the competitive interactions in service industries where firms cater to multiple customer classes or market segments with the help of shared service facilities or processes so as to exploit pooling benefits. Different customer classes typically have distinct sensitivities...

In many industries, firms consider the option of outsourcing an important service process associated with the goods or services they bring to the market. Often, competing firms outsource this service process to one or more common service suppliers. When they outsource to a common service...