Filling the gap between customers’ expectations and inland transportation services - A QFD approach
Ladda ner
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Publicerad
2021
Författare
Svanberg, Joakim
Gunnarsson, Arwid
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
The shipping industry is a vital part of global trade where the complexity of supply chains has increased dramatically and shippers have met these challenges by vertically integrating. To maintain a competitive advantage in today's B2B service environment, companies must understand customer’s expectations on services. So far, multiple studies have investigated customer expectations and their fit with product attributes, but few have been researching in a vertically integrated shipping context for inland transportation services.
Therefore, this study aims to investigate and explore the fit between customer requirements and inland transportation services in the northern region of Sweden by examining one single shipping company, referred to as this study’s case company. This study has used a case study with a QFD approach for developing an adapted HoQ model. Both quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) methods were used to collect and analyze data in five steps according to the HoQ matrix.
With the use of HoQ methodology, findings show 12 unique service attributes highlighted as important for the case company’s inland transportation and 14 unique customer expectations highlighted by customers in interviews. After the customers ranked each customer expectation in a survey, a QFD team was appointed to analyze the relationship between each service attribute and customer expectation with a score dependent on the relationship strength. This data was then calculated and summarized to investigate what service attribute fulfills customers’ expectations the best and which service attribute does not satisfy the customers’ expectations on inland transportation services. It was concluded that some service attributes were better equipped to meet customers’ requirements while others did not.