Service quality assessment and enhancement using Kano model

Abstract

Success in the retail sector is highly dependent on customer satisfaction. Maintaining a competitive edge depends upon the service providers knowing and enacting what is important to their customers. Multiple studies have employed various research approaches to identifying characteristics of customer satisfaction in different sectors as well as retail sector. However, very few have determined such characteristics using multiple approaches simultaneously in the retail store. This study aims to identify, categorize, and rank the retail store attributes, based on their effects on customer satisfaction. A survey focusing on retail store characteristics that impact customer satisfaction was developed and distributed. Over 400 responses were collected and evaluated, using the Kano model. Results showed that visually appealing facilities and error-free transactions are of prime importance to customers. They are taken for granted, but their absence plays a significant role in customer dissatisfaction. An easy-to-navigate store layout and readily available service increase customer satisfaction, but their absence doesn’t decrease customer satisfaction. Clean public areas and modern-looking equipment are important, and improvements to them increase customer satisfaction at a proportional rate. The findings of this study will assist service providers in realizing the relative importance of the attributes of retail stores and in evaluating the impacts of their current practices on customer satisfaction levels. Such importance will also help retail sector policy makers in mandating policies focusing on must-have attributes to preserve customer satisfaction.

A Study on the Factors Affecting Customer Satisfaction with Institutional Foodservice during COVID-19

“…Therefore, CSC were analyzed to identify the qualities that affect customer satisfaction and increase the reliability of the results [ 46 , 47 , 48 ]. The CSC of institutional foodservice was based on responses classified in the Kano model as having the A, O, M, I attributes, and the results are shown in Table 9 .…”

“…To increase customer satisfaction, it is obviously important to strengthen and maintain high quality in the categories that strongly affect the Better (satisfaction coefficient). However, because high Worse (dissatisfaction coefficient) scores negatively affect customer satisfaction, it is also important to improve Worse [ 38 , 46 ].…”

“…The CSC is an effective way to categorize customer satisfaction factors because it can contribute to strategic decision-making about qualities to be improved and uses a distribution of continuous coefficients of Better and Worse rather than frequency [ 46 , 47 , 48 ]. Figure 4 shows the CSC Better (right) and Worse (left) for each institutional foodservice quality factor.…”

Demand analysis of telenursing among empty-nest elderly individuals with chronic diseases based on the Kano model

“…“Must-be qualities” are the basic characteristics of services or products. Participants think they are services that are taken for granted or that must be possessed ( 17 ). In this study, “Remote monitoring of vital signs and sleep”, “Remote one-button emergency caller” and “Remote emergency assistance arrangement” were “must-be qualities”.…”

“…The Kano model is an easy and effective method to recognize service attributes, and the model can accurately identify the service attributes of customers' demands ( 16 ). The Kano model was proposed by a Japanese professor named Kano in 1984 ( 17 ). In accordance with the relationship between the subjective feelings of customers and the objective performance of products, the Kano model divided the service attributes into must-be qualities (M), one-dimensional qualities (O), attractive qualities (A), indifferent qualities (I) and reverse qualities (R) ( 18 ), as shown in Figure 1 .…”