The psychology of virtual queue: when waiting feels less like waiting
Kejia Hu1, Xun Xu2, Ao Qu3
1Vanderbilt University; 2California State University, Stanislaus, United States of America; 3Vanderbilt University
Discussant: Qiuping Yu (Georgia Institute of Technology)
We use a text mining approach to extract waiting complaints from over 0.72 million online customer reviews of restaurants and conduct difference-in-differences regressions to estimate the impact of Virtual Queue (VQ). We find that VQ reduces customers' pre-process waiting complaints and does not lead to in-process waiting complaints increase. VQ also enhances customers' overall satisfaction. Service providers who face high substitutability or offer low-value service are benefited most from VQ.