Strategic Revenue Management of Preemptive versus Non-Preemptive Queues

Abstract: Consider a two-class unobservable priority queue, with Poisson arrivals, generally distributed service, and strategic customers. Customers are charged a fee when joining the premium class. We analyze the maximum revenue achievable under the non-preemptive (NP) and preemptive-resume (PR) policies, and show that a provider is always better off implementing the PR policy. Further, the maximum revenue under PR is sometimes achieved when only a fraction of the customers join the premium class.