顧客價值為基礎的競爭策略模式－－模糊品質機能展開之應用

The Competitive Strategy Model based on Customer Value: An Application of Fuzzy Quality Function Deployment

過去對於顧客價值的衡量大多假設消費者是以片段的方式思考，並以單一步驟的程序進行分析，如此可能無法得到顧客價值的全貌。另外，亦忽略消費者對顧客價值屬性偏好，主觀判斷上的模糊性特質。所以本研究為了建立顧客的價值屬性及掌握顧客價值的特性，並分析消費者對於顧客價值屬性偏好的模糊性認知差異。因此利用「方法－－目的鏈」分析法，建立顧客價值屬性之層級結構；其次，依據消費者對顧客價值的模糊認知，利用「模糊品質機能展開」和資訊量「熵」值，進行顧客價值評估，來發展量販店的顧客價值競爭策略模式。實證結果發現，基準量販店在「賣場氣氛」和「設備」方面的競爭能力明顯不足，而在吸引「價格關心者」的喜愛方面，則具有競爭優勢。

Driven by global competition and demanding customers, more and more industries would search for new ways and modes to strengthen and retain competitive advantage. In the past, many researches in the quality management were very popular and managers learned how to solve the problems between products of an organization and internal operational processes. Nevertheless, due to more emphasis on internal orientation, most quality tools were restricted to the dealing of internal process and product improvements. Therefore, managers have noticed that the voice and demand of customers are the factors which determine the required improvements and the customer satisfaction measurement. The customer’s voice often contains ambiguity and multiplicity of meaning. It is also recognized that human assessment on qualitative attributes is always subjective and imprecise. In order to maintain the competitive advantages, organizations should design products and services fitting with customers’ expectations and cognitions. It is uneasy to offer operational tools for implementing a customer focus. Thus, the mixed analysis of integrating marketing, management and operational research is the key factor to idealize the benefit of determining the characteristics of product and service combinations. This study presents a model that considers the attributes of customer value by means-end chain analysis. Besides, utilizing fuzzy quality function deployment and entropy method helps to structure the amount of information about customer’s cognitions. Using these tools, organizations will become much better in matching internal quality management capabilities with external strategic focus that is consistent with how customers perceive values. The analysis of this study is divided into 4 phases. First, using content analysis to construct attributes of customer value, we give a concise and applicable qualitative description by means-end chains description and the corresponding quantitative presentation of the four steps in HOQ that focus on the customer input (phase 1). Then the fuzzy method is used to convert the customer’s linguistic assessment to fuzzy numbers, and the relative importance of the customer needs is rated using fuzzy arithmetic (phase 2). The entropy method of information theory is applied to the customers’ assessments of the performance of related competitors to obtain another set of ratings, called competitive priority ratings (phase 3). The two sets of ratings from step 2 and step 3 are then combined to produce the final importance ratings of the customer value (phase 4). The collection of the raw data from three wholesale stores can be described in two steps: Firstly, 160 repertory grid interviews were carried out in order to identify relevant attributes of customer values. Secondly, the same respondents were asked to participate in a laddering interview. Thus, the researchers took the stated attributes, benefit components and values as a basis for defining a total of 25 categories, corresponding to the individual elements. The conclusions drawn from the study are as follows: 1. These individual means-end chains can be combined to form a hierarchical value map, containing all the element connections mentioned most frequently by the respondents. 86% of all mentioned most frequently by the respondents are shown in the hierarchical value map obtained in our study. Besides, four different consumers’ types are distinguished as “the pleasure seekers”, “the adventurous”, “the price-conscious”, “the adventurous” and “the targetshoppers”. 2. Applying the house of quality, we can obtain the competitive performance analysis among wholesale stores in terms of the ten customer values based on the customer comparison matrix. The result shows the membership degrees of performance values in “preserved relationship”, “facilities”, “brand reputations” of wholesale store A1 are inferior to those of wholesale stores A2 and A3. The consumers perceive the fuzzy concept of customer values in the wholesale store A1 should be established to assist the customers’ requirements and needs with highly regards. 3. The crisp and fuzzy ratings result in the same rankings in the final importance evaluation of customer value, but crisp ratings are closer to the upper limits of membership degree with the corresponding fuzzy ratings and father away from the lower limits of membership degree. This implies that fuzzy ratings are indeed more representative of the variation of the attributes’ importance for customer value. 4. The fuzzy interval in different attributes of customer value shows the great variations to “the pleasure-seekers” and “the target-shoppers”. The variation with fuzzy intervals has a little difference in “The price-conscious” and “The adventurous”. This means the two types of groups reveal stable grades of membership in cognitions among the attributes of customer value.