Abstract
In this study, we explore the needs of different valuable customer groups for service quality and how limited resources are allocated to enhance service quality. Accordingly, we propose a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tool that uses fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE) in combination with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to help companies enhance understanding of quantitative data (the weights of the factors that affect service quality) and qualitative information to identify valuable customers. Fifty-three experts and 304 consumers at convenience stores (CVS) comprise the data set. We employed the AHP to obtain index weights in the second step of FSE and conducted FSE to determine the importance of various valuable customer groups. The results demonstrate that different valuable customer groups have dissimilar perceptions and feelings about service quality. The findings indicate that customers between “20 to 29 years old” are the most valuable customer group and that most consumers do not care much about “problem solving”. The analysis is distinct from extant work in that it examines the effect of receiving service quality from a consumer viewpoint, as we conducted a comprehensive analysis from both customer and expert perspectives.
Highlights
Market saturation, globalization, online developments, shorter product lifecycles, and ever-changing consumption patterns challenge today’s retail industry
We investigated the needs of different valuable customer groups for service quality in efforts to improve customer satisfaction
The results (Table 5) indicate that the goodness of fit with convenience stores (CVS) service quality is in descending order: “20 to 29 years old” > “30 to years old” and “over years old” >
Summary
Globalization, online developments, shorter product lifecycles, and ever-changing consumption patterns challenge today’s retail industry. The supply of tangible products has typically been robust—albeit the pandemic has created serious supply chain shortages—consumers have been conventionally attracted by intangible services. To be successful in this context, retailers must keep providing both goods and services of satisfactory quality [2]. Service quality is critical to customer-oriented businesses [3] and is a key factor in the success of retailers and a major factor in consumer choice [4]. Taiwan has the highest global density of convenience stores (CVS); they have adapted to the rapid growth of the retail market through unique chain management, mainly attracting customers by providing convenient services [5]. In this study, we examine the relationship between CVS customer groups and service quality in Taiwan.
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