Customer loyalty program based on quality function deployment with fuzzy linguistic preference relation

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Marketing and Distribution Management, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

2 Department of Marketing Management, Shih Chien University Kaohsiung Campus, Taiwan

Abstract

The competition among shopping malls is getting increasingly more intense.
In order to enhance corporate competitiveness and profitability, how to
retain key loyal customers has become an important issue for the managers of
shopping malls. Customer loyalty programs are a universal practice. This
study proposes an analytical model for developing the strategic management
of customer loyalty programs. Based on quality function deployment, our
model constructs a fuzzy relational matrix to integrate the customer
benefits and the customer loyalty programs. The results contribute to a
better understanding of the different importance of customer benefits with
respect to ``Utilitarian benefits'', ``Hedonic benefits'' and ``Symbolic
benefits''. The study's findings provide prioritized customer loyalty
programs, including ``Newest information transmissions,'' ``Communication
service specialists,'' ``Exclusive free gift promotions,'' and ``VIP lounge
service,'' which can be used to determine the directions for the improvement
of shopping malls. The study has implications for the theory and
practitioners. First, it allows the integration of customer benefits in
customer loyalty programs and the consideration of VIP customers in
the programs. Second, the requirement evaluation considering fuzzy
linguistic preferences allows for prioritizing the customer loyalty programs
when dealing with uncertainty and vagueness. Finally, this approach helps to
obtain more realistic results by integrating fuzzy decision-making into QFD.

Keywords

Iranian Journal of Fuzzy Systems
Volume 17, Issue 1
January and February 2020
Pages 105-120

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