Improvement gap analysis

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to present the improvement gap analysis (IGA), a simple method to direct improvement opportunities in services that overcomes limitations of the traditional IPA regarding excitement and basic attributes. Design/methodology/approach -The proposed method is theoretically developed and simulated. The theoretical simulation explains why IGA overcomes limitations of the traditional importance performance analysis (IPA) and how it could identify the impact of excitement innovative attributes. A case study with 287 customers of supermarkets was used to empirically test IGA and compare it to IPA. Findings -The case study confirmed that the traditional IPA may lead to wrong improvement decisions for basic and excitement attributes. It happens because IPA is based on current attributes' performance and considers the relationship between attribute performance and customer satisfaction as a linear one. Also, it cannot identify the impact of excitement innovative attributes on customer satisfaction. Using only information about the company's customers, IGA could differentiate neutral from excitement attributes in the case study and, differently from IPA, it correctly identified improvement decisions for basic and excitement attributes. Research limitations/implications -Although IGA can theoretically distinguish between excitement innovative and neutral attributes, the case study presented in the paper did not test any innovative attribute. All attributes were already experimented or known by the subjects. Future research should empirically test IGA's real capability to identify excitement innovative attributes. Practical implications -Managers should be aware that IPA may lead to wrong improvement decisions. It may leave excitement attributes unnoticed or direct the company to the improvement of basic attributes that already have adequate performance. IGA can be a good substitute for IPA with the additional advantage that it does not need information about competitors in the analysis. Also, since service quality evaluation depends heavily on customer perception, IGA is particularly suitable to this industry, but it could also be used for product improv...

Usando a Análise de Lacunas de Melhoria na gestão de trade-offs de estratégias operacionais

“…Based on the survey results, it turns out the non-linearity between performance and customer satisfaction, observing that the strategies "speed" and "reliability" have lower levels of dissatisfaction with operational performance degradation, than others strategies, confirming the non-linearity and the change in importance due to the change of performances (Kano et al, 1984;Tontini & Picolo, 2010, 2014.…”

“…And lastly, sufficiency and insufficient issues of operating strategies, using IGA method -Improvement Gap Analysis (Tontini & Picolo, 2010). The expected satisfaction levels were obtained with the same Likert scale used in the previous stage, because of standardization of scale.…”

“…But there may be competitive criteria in which the relationship between performance and the satisfaction is not linear. Possibly there are obligatory competitive criteria, attractive and neutral (Anderson & Mittal, 2000;Brandt, 1987;Cheung & Lee, 2005;Kano et al, 1984;Matzler et al, 2004;Picolo, 2005;Picolo & Tontini, 2008;Tontini & Picolo, 2010, 2014Ting & Chen, 2002).…”

“…The functional question (FQ), in which the factor would have high performance, and the dysfunctional question (DQ), in which the factor would have low performance. The third question is about the satisfaction with the current performance of the factor under study (CS) (Tontini & Picolo, 2010, 2014.…”

Interaction of service attributes on customer satisfaction

“…One limitation is that IPA doesn't consider the non-linear relationship between attribute performance and customer satisfaction. Some papers have proposed methods to overcome this limitation by joint use or fusion of IPA and Kano Model [13] [14][15] [16].…”