Management of Zone of Tolerance Based on Weber-Fechner's Law

Abstract

Customer's service expectations are a range of services between desired service and adequate service. zone of tolerance between desired service and adequate service can either be reduced or be expanded for a customer. Therefore, marketers must not only understand the size of the area and boundaries of zone of tolerance, but also know when and how changes of the zone of tolerance for a given customer.In this paper three problems are studied:when do customers tend to reduce the impact of the negative service quality? When do customers tend to enlarge the impact?when do customers tend to filter the negative impact? Keywords: Perceived service quality; zone of tolerance; Weber-Fechner's LawParasuraman、Zeithaml and Berry's study results extended the customer's expectations from a point to a region. When the actual service performance is lower than tolerance zone, the customer will feel unsatisfied,and customer's loyalty also decreased. When the service performance is higher than the tolerance zone, the customer will feel pleasure and enhance loyalty. But the customers in zone of tolerance will be satisfied with the service performance, and they are not sensitive to the differences of service performance.For the customers,they developt relations with the enterprise and perceive service quality through service contacts, so companies have to manage the customer's perceived service quality. This requires that companies must first understand the customer service experience in the process of change of zone of tolerance,and should manage it actively. Enterprises should take advantage of the characteristics of customer perception in the zone of tolerance and change their service mode in the zone of tolerance. Enterprises can reduce costs under the conditions without affecting the service quality of customer perceived. when do customers tend to reduce the impact of the negative service quality? When do customers tend to enlarge the impact?when do customers tend to filter the negative impact? Solving these three problems have practical significance for the determination of a reasonable level of service quality and the lower service costs under the condition of customer satisfaction. Ⅰ. Weber-Fechner's Law and Definition of customer perceived relationship Weber -Fechner's law describes the relationship between psychological state of individuals (mental physical) and external stimuli (physical) . the basic formula is: I a S log = To the formula， S stands for the value of feels , I stands for the value of stimuli and a is constant.This formula demonstrates when the various stimuli (such as information, services, advertising) from outside environment change as logarithmic function, the statement perceived by individual can be changed. S is also known as JND and JND is a psychological physical value.The function relationship between JND and amount of stimulation I show figure 1: 978-1-4244-6581-1/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE