The application framework of Kansei Engineering to enhance Customer Relationship Management in services

In order to fit what a customer needs and wants, a product or a service should be qualified. By incorporating Ergonomics/Human Factors and affect, quality of products and services should promote happiness and health to the users. Improved quality and long-lasting products/services make customers happy (Nagamachi & Lokman, 2011). According to Tribus (1990), quality is defined as a condition when customers have a love affair and emotional bondage with particular products and services. It implies that the main concern of qualified products and services is customer emotional experience. This study aims to explore the customer emotional needs (Kansei in Japanese) experienced and encountered in services. As emphasized in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), understanding the customer emotional needs is one succesful key for CRM implementation. Kansei Engineering (KE) methodology that has been widely used for modeling the emotional needs in product design is proposed to support the CRM improvement. Hence, this study has two objectives. The first is to develop an integrative application framework of the contribution of KE to CRM, while the second is to provide an illustrative example of how to apply KE-CRM into service industry. This study is expected to contribute to the theoretical academic literatures on Customer Relationship Management (CRM), marketing management, Ergonomics/Human Factors and Kansei by proposing an application framework and methodology of integrated KE-CRM. In addition, practical contributions will be presented by providing a guidance to service managers in collecting and capturing the emotional needs of customers, using the rich-channel of information for collecting information, and investigating what service attributes that are significantly sensitive to the customer emotions. It is, then, to be used as a prioritization tool for continuous improvement or maintenance on service attributes

Incorporating service quality tools into Kansei Engineering in services: A case study of Indonesian tourists

Due to market dynamics and challenges, it is imperative for companies to put their concern on strategic marketing orientation. In facts, products and services of similar quality are ubiquitous in today’s global market. Basically, functionality and usability alone are no longer prominent success factors in product and service innovation because customers today concern themselves more on satisfying their emotions than merely their cognition. Kansei Engineering (KE) has shown its superiority in investigating and modelling customer emotion (“Kansei” in Japanese) for product development. In dealing with customer needs, service quality tools such as quality function deployment (QFD) and the Kano model, have been applied extensively. But none have been able to incorporate and model customer’s emotional needs. Some attention has been given to investigate this but, thus far, there is no formal methodology that can account for customer emotional needs in service design. To fill this niche, this study proposed an integrative framework of KE incorporating the Kano model and QFD applied to services. This study extended the work by Hartono and Tan (2011) and Hartono et al. (2012) and presented a survey on luxury hotel services involving more than a hundred Indonesian tourists as the subject of study. Luxury hotels are reported to have greater strength of emotion than any other hotel segment. This work confirmed that emotion is to be more important than cognition in impacting overall customer satisfaction. Practically, it gives insight on which service attributes deserve more attention with regard to their impact on customer emotion. Indonesian tourists shared a common response to the Kansei word “elegant” which correlates with their common cultural dimension of “power distance”. Performing a Kansei evaluation to understanding cultural backgrounds may yield valuable insights for international tourist marketing strategies and companies’ business sustainability

The integrative framework of Kansei Engineering and SERVQUAL incorporating CRM applied to services: A case study on hotel services in Surabaya

Understanding customer needs better is a key for the success of customer relationship management (CRM). It may cov-er insight into customer decision-making and information about customers. Essentially, CRM is to understand customer needs so that it may improve a company’s long-term profitability. Lack of customer focus is quite critical to the success of CRM implementation. Specifically, a mechanism for maintaining and developing customer loyalty is a key potential to be taken into account. In short, understanding of customer needs (both functional and emotional) is needed. More importantly, understanding customer emotional needs is vital for predicting and influencing customer purchasing be-havior. Customers today concern themselves more on satisfying their emotions and feelings more on satisfying their emotions than merely their cognition. Some commonly used service quality tools such as quality function deployment (QFD) and SERVQUAL have been applied extensively to services. Many service researchers have successfully used SERVQUAL and other similar scales to measure and improve service quality in a variety of industries. But none have been able to incorporate customers’ emotional needs. Some attention has been given to investigate this. But thus far, there is no formal methodology that can account for customer’s feelings and emotions taking into account CRM in ser-vice design. To fill this niche, this study proposes an integrative framework of Kansei Engineering (KE) and SERVQUAL applied to services. This study uses data from tourists who stayed in hotels in Surabaya to demonstrate the integrative model framework and show how the customer emotional needs can be designed into its hotel services sys-tem

The Role of Kansei Engineering in Influencing Overall Satisfaction and Behavioral Intention in Service Encounters

Customers today concern themselves more on fulfilling their emotional needs rather than rationales and functionalities. In dealing with customer emotions in products/services, Kansei Engineering (KE) is applied. A comprehensive case study in luxury hotels was conducted. Eighty one Indonesian, 75 Singaporean, and 74 Japanese tourists participated in this survey. It aims to investigate the relationships among constructs during service encounter process. The finding shows that emotions (affective process) play a significant role as a complement to cognitive process in influencing customer satisfaction. Among 3 populations, Japanese was found to be more Kansei-oriented customer. Keywords: Kansei Engineering, emotional needs, customer satisfactio

Integrating Kansei Engineering into Kano and SERVQUAL Model to Determine the Priorities of Service Improvement (Case Study: Café Agape at Ruteng, East Nusa Tenggara – Indonesia)

In order to improve service quality, a research framework of integrating Kansei Engineering into Kano and SERV-QUAL was deployed in Café Agape. SERVQUAL model is used to identify whether the provided service has been fulfill customer needs; whether customers were satisfied and what service attributes that have negative customer satisfaction indexes. Kano model can classify the service attributes into groups, i.e., attractive, one dimensional, must be or even indifferent; the classification can be used to determine the priorities. Kansei Engineering takes the customer emotion into account and tries to identify customer needs (feelings) more specific. The integration is aimed to determine the improvement priorities. A survey of 100 customers using 21 service attributes and 10 Kansei words resulted on 15 attributes that have negative customer satisfaction score. However, only 9 attributes will be prioritized for improvement because they are Attractive (A) and One dimensional (O) attributes due to the result of Kano classification. The analysis of Kansei Engineering showed that “convenience” was the customers’ most important emotion when they receive services at Café Agape. Meanwhile, there are 6 of 10 Kansei word (customer emotional needs) significantly different between two groups of Café Agape’s customers; foreign/overseas customers felt happier, more relieved, friendly, welcome and attractive but less sedate/quiet than local/domestic ones when they consume services at Café Agape

KERANGKA KONSEPTUAL APLIKASI KANSEI ENGINEERING DAN TRIZ PADA INDUSTRI LAYANAN

Saat ini pendekatan tentang emotional feeling dalam sebuah industri, baik industri manufaktur maupun industri jasa, semakin banyak diperhatikan. Kepuasan konsumen dalam industri tidak hanya tergantung pada kualitas produk, dan performansi kerja dari suatu industri, namun juga berkaitan dengan emosi atau perasaan dari konsumen. Adanya suasana atau perlakuan tertentu dapat mempengaruhi kondisi emosional konsumen, sehingga menentukan puas atau tidaknya mereka pada suatu industri. Bila kebutuhan emosional dari konsumen dapat terpenuhi dengan baik oleh pihak industri, maka besar kemungkinan konsumen akan kembali pada industri tersebut. Aplikasi Kansei Engineering (KE) telah terbukti secara empiris mampu memenuhi kebutuhan emosional konsumen. Metode ini telah sukses diaplikasikan untuk desain produk maupun layanan. Pada studi ini, metode TRIZ (Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch) yang berfokus pada pembangkitan ide-ide baru, dengan cara menyelesaikan kontradiksi dan menggunakan prinsip-prinsip inovatif, diintegrasikan dengan Kansei Engineering (KE). Dengan integrasi KE dan TRIZ, maka diharapkan akan terbentuk suatu solusi yang inventif yang berorientasi pada kebutuhan emosional pelanggan. Dengan kata lain, metode integrasi ini mampu menghasilkan solusi yang unik dan inovatif, sekaligus dapat menyelesaikan masalah yang terjadi melalui keunggulan masing-masing metode tersebut. Sebagai ilustrasi, sebuah studi kasus di sebuah sektor layanan akan disajikan di artikel ini

Panduan Survei Data Anthropometri

Anthropometry adalah salah satu cabang penting dari ergonomi yang berkaitan dengan pengukuran dimensi tubuh (ukuran tubuh, bentuk, berat, mobilitas dan fleksibilitas). Panduan survei data anthropometri ini dibuat dengan tujuan untuk mempermudah proses pengukuran dimensi manusia khususnya populasi Indonesia yang lebih terstruktur dan terstandar. Hasil pengukuran ini akan melengkapi database antropometri Indonesia (level nasional), yang nantinya bisa dimanfaatkan sebagai input untuk merancang tempat kerja ataupun produk yang sesuai dengan ukuran tubuh operator atau pengguna Indonesia

Indonesian Anthropometry Update Through Drillis & Contini Revisited and Structural Equation Modeling Incorporating Children, Adult and Elderly Populations

Research on anthropometry deals with human physical measurement, capability and limitation. Due to various body measures of user of different cultures, gender, and geographical factors, then an understanding of anthropometry characteristics is a must. This study adopts Drillis and Contini ratio scaling method and complements the previous research by incorporating Indonesian adults [150 subjects], children [200 subjects] and elderly [120 subjects] groups. By employing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), it was shown that limb and girth & width segments were significantly correlated with stature and weight, respectively to all population groups, both for male and female subjects. Moreover, it was confirmed that the ratio scale method has been sufficiently applied to all anthropometric groups, so that the body segments measures can be predicted. Practically, the finding can be utilized to support product design and development phases, especially in the use of more appropriate anthropometric data

Pemodelan Kansei Engineering Type I & Kansei Quality Management Untuk Peningkatan Kinerja Layanan Logistik

Tuntutan pemberian layanan logistik yang prima khususnya logistik pihak ketiga (third party logistics atau 3PL) meningkat tajam seiring dengan tumbuhnya persaingan perusahaan logistik di Indonesia. 3PL merupakan perusahaan eksternal yang melayani kegiatan logistik untuk perusahaan lain. Kualitas prima sesuai dengan standar yang ditetapkan, harga yang kompetitif serta pengiriman tepat waktu merupakan kriteria dasar dalam pemilihan layanan. Mengacu pada ketatnya persaingan saat ini yang menyediakan performansi yang seimbang untuk ketiga kriteria tersebut, tentu saja dibutuhkan kriteria pembeda yang menjadi penentu keputusan akhir. Kepuasan emosional (atau disebut sebagai Kansei dalam bahasa Jepang) dianggap sebagai kriteria penentu dalam pengambilan keputusan akhir. Namun, bagaimana keterlibatan Kansei dalam proses pengembangan dan peningkatan layanan logistik masih belum banyak diteliti. Dengan demikian, studi tentang pemodelan Kansei Engineering untuk peningkatan kinerja layanan logistik dilakukan, dengan mengeksplorasi dan mengintegrasikan Kansei Engineering Type I (KE Type I) dan Kansei Quality Management (KQM). KE Type I terkait dengan identifikasi Kansei words dan atribut layanan logistik, sedangkan KQM lebih menitikberatkan pada validasi model matematika Kansei yang dibangun berdasarkan atribut layanan logistik yang kritis. Untuk memahami aplikasi riil dari model ini, sebuah studi di perusahaan 3PL dilakukan. Beberapa atribut layanan yang kritis terhadap Kansei dan menjadi penentu transaksi akan diidentifikasi sebagai langkah perbaikan maupun penguat diferensiasi dan kompetisi bisnis di perusahaan tersebut

Indonesian anthropometry update for special populations incorporating Drillis and Contini revisited

Nowadays, research on anthropometry becomes more essential, and yet, it is critical due to its implication and contribution to product and system design. Since it deals with human capability and limitation on physical activities, its role becomes more important, especially, when it comes to the needs for special populations. This study provides a comparative study between elderly and children anthropometry using Drillis and Contini approach incorporating Chinese and non-Chinese ethnic groups. More than 1000 subjects involved in this study. After the data refinement process, there were 498 valid data for children (i.e., 98 Chinese male, 136 non-Chinese male, 134 Chinese female, and 130 non-Chinese female), and 556 valid data for elderly (i.e., 186 Chinese male, 148 non-Chinese male, 115 Chinese female, and 107 non-Chinese female). In general, the finding shows that elderly (both male and female, both Chinese and non-Chinese) tends to have similar size and pattern with adult. Whilst, male and female children of 6e9 years sub-group (both Chinese and non-Chinese sub-group) tend to have higher weight ratio, compared to elderly and the children of 10e12 years sub-group. It was easily recognized that the children tend to have higher rate for limb segments compared to other body dimensions. At all sample groups, the eye height and shoulder height were found to be highly correlated with stature. Moreover, related to body weight, all samples show that thigh thickness and abdominal depth were deemed to be significant measures to be associated with. The expected contribution of this study is that to update the Indonesian special population anthropometry and to identify which measures are significantly associated with stature and weight, respectively with regard to different special population and given limited anthropometric data. Practically, given the data of stature and body weight, product designer can predict the anthropometric characteristics for special population