A customer value model for sustainable service design
Introduction
Environmental problems have become increasingly serious over the last couple of decades. To solve these problems, we need to reduce the volumes of artifacts that are produced and consumed to an adequate, manageable size, however without decreasing our current quality of life. Consequently, we must shift to a new paradigm that aims at qualitative satisfaction rather than quantitative sufficiency. In other words, economic growth should be decoupled from consumption of materials and energy [1].
To achieve this paradigm, products should have higher value, based primarily on knowledge and service content, rather than mere materialistic worth [2]. In this context, the concept of ‘Product-Service Systems’ (PSS) [3], [4], [5] has been attracting considerable attention, as it creates new value by coupling a product with a service.
Services create value without abandoning materials, and therefore can continuously create value throughout the entire life cycle of a product. Consequently, the use of PSSs can be an approach for dematerializing products without losing value [6], [7]. In this dematerialization by services, the level of customer satisfaction generated toward a service plays an important role in compensating for the compromise in materialistic value of the products. For example, in the literature of environmentally conscious design, it has been pointed out that environmentally conscious products need to decrease environmental impacts in consideration of customer demands [8], [9], [10].
At this point in time, only a few studies have focused on the design of these types of services [11], [12], [13]. Consequently, very few methodologies exist for the support of service design from the customer satisfaction perspective (e.g., [14], [15]). For this reason, we have initiated a fundamental Service Engineering research study that is designed to examine services from an engineering viewpoint.
Service Engineering has been investigated previously by several research groups [16], [17], [18]. We also have previously proposed concrete engineering methodologies for the design and evaluation of services [10], [19] and have developed a computer-aided modeling tool called ‘Service Explorer’ [19]. In Service Engineering, a method is proposed to design and evaluate services from a customer's viewpoint [32]. In this method, in the same manner as methods used in product design (e.g., [20], [21]), customer weighting of requirements for a service is quantified in terms of the customer importance attached to the functions of the service. Therefore, it is useful for service designers to evaluate the design solution accordingly, and to determine the concrete points to be investigated. However, customer weighting of requirements is easily affected by the quality of service that they have already received. In order to provide a service that continuously satisfies customer requirements, service designers should take into account the immediate desires of their customers, as well as the needs that arise as a result of the service they provide.
On the marketing side, on the other hand, several theoretical frameworks have been advanced to ascertain the changes in customer requirements that have developed across the services received [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30]. For the purpose of marketing, these frameworks treat abstract concepts such as satisfaction of a service, expectation of a service, and quality of a service. For an engineering design, however, it is necessary to approach a service from the perspective of concrete service components such as its functional and quality elements.
This paper applies the methods proposed from the marketing perspective to service components from the engineering design perspective. On this basis, we then propose a model for expressing the changes in customer weighting of criteria, brought about by the quality of service that the customer has received. The proposed method is verified through its application to a practical case.
Section snippets
Overview
Service is defined as an activity between a service provider and a service receiver that results in a change in the state of the receiver [19]. According to the definition, a receiver is satisfied when his/her state changes to a new, desired state. For the purpose of Service Engineering (SE), the design of services must be based on the state change of a receiver. Therefore, it is necessary to find a method of expressing these state changes.
States of the service receivers are represented as a
Objective
As mentioned above, we employ a method whereby the customer importance that is attached to the functions of a service is used to calculate total customer satisfaction with an RSP. This method enables service designers to evaluate the design solution without difficulty and to determine the concrete points to be investigated. As mentioned in Step 4, however, the importance of functions, which reflect customer weighting of requirements, is treated as a fixed value. In the marketing field, an
Method
The authors verified the present method by considering an example from domestic in-flight services. The respondents were defined as business persons. Since the purpose of travel would change the points to which the customer pays attention, we narrowed the target by purpose. In addition, the customer requirements on business trips are rather monotonous compared to those associated with vacation trips. Therefore, in the application, we assumed a business person who usually uses domestic flights
Results
The mean responses of the importance of each FP are presented in Table 1. This table delineates the relationship assumed between importance and satisfaction. The highest mean scores of importance appear in the satisfaction levels that deviate the most from the expectation, i.e., −3 (very dissatisfied) and 3 (very satisfied), without ‘seat to sit in.’ Fig. 7 illustrates the results obtained from the verification. The horizontal axis represents the satisfaction of an FP, and the vertical axis
Discussion
In this study, we applied a theoretical approach called the ‘assimilation-contrast theory’ to FPs and proposed a model that expresses the relationship between satisfaction and importance. The application revealed that the assumed relationship between satisfaction and importance was found in the FPs. Using the S–A functions mentioned in Section 2 step 3, service designers can understand the relationship between the quality and the satisfaction on FP. Therefore, by combining the proposed method
Conclusion
This paper proposed a model to express the changes in customer demands resulting from the quality of service received by them. Specifically, we classified customer importance as ‘empirical importance’ and ‘attention’ and proposed a model to express the changes in the importance of an FP brought about by a single service. The application revealed the assumed relationship between satisfaction and importance with respect to an FP: the greater the satisfaction/dissatisfaction, the greater is the
Acknowledgement
The authors express their appreciation to Mr. Yohei Yoshimitsu, who collaborated in the case study presented here.
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