Strategic joining rules in a single server Markovian queue with Bernoulli vacation

The strategic joining behavior of customers in a single‐server Markovian queueing system with Bernoulli vacation is studied. It is assumed that the server begins a vacation period if the queue is empty upon completion of a service, and if the queue is not empty, the server will take a Bernoulli type vacation. Assuming that arriving customers can observe various levels of the system information, we study strategic customers’ decision on whether to join or balk the queue based on a linear reward‐cost structure. The Nash equilibrium strategies in the fully observable case and the unobservable cases are investigated. The effect of the information level as well as several parameters on the equilibrium behavior is illustrated via numerical examples.