Although the norm in many retail banks is to serve customers on a first-come, first-served basis, some customers try to cut the line, usually by providing an excuse for their urgency. In other queues, however, this behavior is considered unacceptable and is aggressively banned. In all of these...

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...