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The experience of waiting for service is often the first direct interaction between customers and most service delivery processes. The literature on satisfaction with waiting has paralleled the literature on general service satisfaction, in which the relative importance of actual performance, perceived performance, and the disconfirmation between expected performance and perceived performance has been the subject of much debate. This paper presents an empirical study of satisfaction with waiting for service in a fast food environment. The study demonstrates that actual waiting time, perceived waiting time, and the disconfirmation between expected waiting time and perceived waiting time are all related to satisfaction with the waiting experience. It further demonstrates that the relative importance of each of these variables in predicting satisfaction depends on the differences in the needs of the customers. The implications for both theory and practice are significant: the importance of the perception of the experience increases as the importance of the satisfaction measure increases. More specifically, for customers who are concerned about time, the perception of the time spent waiting is a better predictor of satisfaction than the actual waiting time.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a scheduling method called the “Asynchronous Harmonic Broadcasting Considering Commercial (AHB‐CC)” method, to reduce waiting time for continuous media data broadcasting.

The authors analyze and evaluate the performance of the proposed AHB‐CC method.

The authors confirm that the proposed method gives shorter average waiting times than the conventional methods.

A future direction of this study will involve making a scheduling method where the server concurrently broadcasts data and commercial contents. Also, maximum buffer size needs to be considered.

In general broadcasting systems, the server broadcasts the same data repetitively and clients wait until the first portion of the data is broadcast. Although the server can deliver the data to many clients concurrently, clients have to wait until their desired data are broadcast.

The AHB‐CC method presented in the paper further reduces waiting time by scheduling an effective broadcast that considers the playing time of commercial contents.

To assess and plan alterations in outpatient clinic structure, produces a computer simulation of an outpatient clinic based on detailed time and role measurements from the authors’ clinic. The simulation which used an object‐oriented design method is able to indicate the impact of changes in clinic structure using patient and doctor waiting times in clinic as endpoint measures. Examines the effects of changes in clinic size, consultation time, patient mix, appointment scheduling and non‐attendance. Finds that patient waiting time could be shortened considerably by using an optimizing appointment scheduler to determine appointment intervals. Clinic mix influences patient waiting time, which was shorter with a 1 in 4 ratio of new to follow‐up patients. In mixed clinics, new patients appointments are optimally spread throughout the clinic to reduce patient waiting time. In all new or all follow‐up clinics, waiting time is improved if the appointment interval reflects the consultation time. Computer modelling can help in optimizing clinic management so improving the delivery of care in outpatient services.

Waiting time, as an important predictor of queue abandonment and patient satisfaction, is important for resource utilization and patient experience management. Medical institutions have given top priority to reforming the appointment system for many years; however, whether the increased information transparency brought about by the appointment scheduling mechanism could improve patient waiting time is not well understood. In this study, the authors examine the effects of information transparency in reducing patient waiting time from an uncertainty perspective.

Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment in a tertiary academic hospital, the authors analyze over one million observational patient visit records and design the propensity score matching plus the difference in difference (PSM-DID) model and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to address this issue.

The authors confirm that, on average, improved information transparency significantly reduces the waiting time for patients by approximately 6.43 min, a 4.90% reduction. The authors identify three types of uncertainties (resource, process and outcome uncertainty) in the patient visit process that affect patients' waiting time. Moreover, information transparency moderates the relationship between three sources of uncertainties and waiting time.

The authors’ work not only provides important theoretical explanations for the patient-level factors of in-clinic waiting time and the reasons for information technology (IT)-enabled appointment scheduling by time slot (ITASS) to shorten patient waiting time and improve patient experience but also provides potential solutions for further exploration of measures to reduce patient waiting time.

This study investigates the effect of user fees on access and waiting time in Nigeria. For access, the effect of user fees on both preventive and curative care; and the effect of user fees on waiting time at public healthcare facilities were examined. User fees are vital for the fiscal sustainability of healthcare provision for most African economies. Its imposition could debar healthcare access by the poor while its removal can reduce quality of care and induce longer waiting time.

The wave 3 of the Nigerian General Household Survey (2015/16) data was used for users of public health facilities. Access to healthcare was modelled using utilization data in a logistic regression model while waiting time was through the Negative Binomial Regression Model (NBRM).

The analyses showed significant effects of user fees on access to both preventive and curative care and on time spent waiting to make use of healthcare services. Individuals were able to access healthcare services regardless of amounts paid. Also, there was a non-negative effect of user fee imposition on waiting time.

Nigeria should improve healthcare facilities to address the enormous demand for healthcare services when designing policy for health sector.

This paper shows that even with the imposition of user fees, healthcare facilities could still not cater for the rising healthcare needs of the populace but cautioned that its abolition may not be a preferred option.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight both the contribution and the present need to reconfigure the literature on “queue culture” as a precursor of the sociology of waiting.

The study employs a legal-structural lens in comparing the initial conceptual treatment of the archetypal “waiting line” with the “line” modifying sociology of waiting that results in waiting rooms, number and telephone queues and in the experience of online waiting.

The initial conception of the culture of the queue understates the importance of three factors: first, the role of third parties in the design, management and inculcation of rules binding those experiencing thick time; second the degree to which communication technology and its attachment to the “mobilities” paradigm has thinned the experience of thick time and lastly the degree to which the increasing commodification of the wait has resulted in the creation of waiting time as a form of pay as you go flexitime.

The social construction of waiting and the experience of thick time are shown to be increasingly part of the privatized market experience where queue management innovations not only are commercialized but have strong implications for the egalitarian social assumptions imbedded in the initial queue culture based sociology of waiting. Policy implications support the present pay for use philosophy increasingly applied in the transition from public to private management of space.

The self-policing “fairness” of the waiting line is now open to scrutiny given the proliferation of the newly shaped distributional logics imbedded in the management, design and use of waiting spaces.

Presents an approach to optimize the service configurations of a student canteen utilizing computer simulation and a total cost function that incorporates both the cost of services and the cost of waiting. The cost of waiting is measured in terms of the impact of waiting on the customer satisfaction and the resulting changes in future repurchases. By collecting data of waiting time and customer satisfaction from a student canteen, first evaluates the impact of waiting time on customer satisfaction and future purchase frequency. Subsequently develops a simulation model to simulate the service processes and waiting line behavior at the student canteen. By varying the number of servers at the two different stages of services and calculating the total cost per customer served, the performance of the system was optimized considering both the service cost and the cost of waiting in term of its impact on future purchases. The approach presented can be used with modification in designing service configurations for a variety of service organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of capacity decisions regarding the number of servers/chefs and tables on identifying a change in the number of wait-related anxious customers, customer losses and customers served to meet the waiting time standards of an actual upscale restaurant.

The authors applied a simulation model to present the consequences of restaurant capacity decisions based on waiting time standards. Arena Simulation Software, licensed by Rockwell Automation, was used for modeling and identifying distributions of the data set provided by the restaurant. An experiment was designed for an upscale restaurant with existing five servers/chefs and 50 tables by changing these resources to measure the changes in customers' wait-related anxiety and other service performance indicators.

The results showed that an additional server/chef on weekends decreases the daily average number of anxious customers by nearly 33% and increases the daily average number of customers served by nearly 3% and has a little positive effect of decreasing customer losses. Table insertion for high- and low-requested seating areas had an only positive effect on decreasing customer losses.

In this study, the service capacity is dependent on waiting time, and it is addressed to study the relationship with customers' wait-related anxiety, which is a subjective metric. This study developed a point of view for identifying anxious customers whose waiting times are much longer than their cooking and delivery duration expectations regarding their meal preferences in the cooking stage and waiting experiences in the service entry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence mechanism of waiting time on customer satisfaction based on first impression bias, which explains how customers’ perceived service-entry waiting time (PSWT) influences their first impression of service staff and satisfaction in the context of online service. Furthermore, the moderating effect of three information formats (formal, informal and hybrid) of opening remark on the relationship between PSWT and first impression, and the moderating effect of perceived in-service waiting time (PIWT) on the relationship between first impression and customer satisfaction are investigated.

Two studies were used to verify the research model. First, an experiment on prepurchase consulting services for cruise tourism products was designed, and 810 Chinese individuals have participated. Second, 20 interviews with e-commerce practitioners in China were conducted.

The results show that, first, PSWT negatively influences customers’ first impression of service staff. Second, customers prefer the hybrid format to present opening remarks, which not only conveys the respect of the staff but also fosters a relationship. Third, in-service waits are equally as important as service-entry waits in online service. When PIWT is longer, the positive influence of first impression on customer satisfaction is weakening, resulting in lower customer satisfaction.

This study provides suggestions for online service enterprises to minimize the negative impact of waiting time and improve customer satisfaction through waiting time management.

This study provides a new perspective for exploring the mechanism of waiting time on customer satisfaction in online service context, and extends previous research related to waiting time by exploring the influence of waiting time in multiple service stages and expression modes of service staff.

Although customer satisfaction and loyalty have attracted a lot of attention in service management research, relatively few studies have examined the impact of waiting time and service quality on customer satisfaction and repurchase frequency. In this study, we model the relationships between customer satisfaction, repurchase frequency, waiting time and other service quality factors in fast food outlets. The results indicate that waiting time and other service factors such as staff attitude, environment, seat availability and food quality significantly influence the customers’ return frequency. Results also show that waiting time, staff attitude, food quality and food variety all significantly affect customer satisfaction. It is also found that the significance of the relationship depends on the timing of the visits. These models will help managers to understand the critical factors that influence customer loyalty and satisfaction in the fast food industry and help them make improvements accordingly.