Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the manager's policy to maximize the profit in a multiple-server queueing facility with a limited queue capacity. We assume that the level of advertizing effects on the arrival rate of customers to the facility. The model without ‘word of mouth effect’ is assumed that the arrival rate is independent on the qualify of service level. We estimate the service quality by the balking rate of customers from system. We extend this to the model with ‘word of mouth effect’. To achieve the maximum profit, the most important factor is the considerably high utilization of facility for both models. Given service rate, we should maintain an effective arrival rate to some extent. To this end, among the available options, an increase of advertizing effort is more desirable than reducing the fee if the service value of customers remains unchanged. We also investigate whether the variability of service time has a significant impact on determining the optimal policy. The cost of service variability is not so expensive as that in a single server model due to the reduced variability of service times in a multiple-server model.