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Hospitality Management 17 (1998) 375390
Quality function deployment: An extendedframework for service quality and customer
satisfaction in the hospitality industry
Miyoung Jeong*, Haemoon Oh
School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Recreation Management, The Pennsylvania State University,
201 Mateer Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Department of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institution Management, The Iowa State University, 6A MacKay Hall,
Ames, IA 50011-1120, USA
Abstract
Research on service quality and customer satisfaction has become significant in the hospital-
ity industry. Nonetheless, most previously proposed or introduced research paradigms have
focused exclusively on customers without equally emphasizing the intra-organizational servicegeneration and delivery processes. In contrast, this study considers both external and internal
service management issues and subsequent service innovations based on the framework of
Quality Function Deployment (QFD). QFD and its relationship to similar concepts are
explained. Next, this study provides an overview of the QFD process and develops a hypotheti-
cal application in the lodging industry in order to illustrate future application and analysis
strategies. Some benefits and disadvantages of the QFD process are discussed as compared to
extant service quality and customer satisfaction paradigms. Finally, suggestions and directions
are offered for future applications, with particular interest in hospitality-specific service man-
agement issues. 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Quality function deployment or QFD; Customer satisfaction; Service process;
Service innovations; Service design; Service quality
1. Introduction
The hospitality industry has witnessed increasing competition for high servicequality and customer satisfaction. This is because customer retention through service
quality and satisfaction has become vital in such saturated markets as the lodging
industry. Today, the majority of hospitality firms are implementing one or two
*Corresponding author. Tel.: 001 814 234 9799; fax: 001 814 863 4257; e-mail: [email protected].
02784319/98/$ See front matter 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S02784 3 1 9 (9 8 )0 0 0 2 4 3
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corporate-wide quality management programs designed to improve service offerings
and market retention. For example, RitzCarltons TQM program has been widely
recognized as a quality winner (Partlow, 1993), while Sheraton recently initiated the
Guest Satisfaction System to enhance customers lodging experience and boost return
rates. It is also notable that, as a central part of these industry wide efforts, a numberof research paradigms such as SERVQUAL, the expectancydisconfirmation model,
and LODGQUAL have been introduced into the hospitality industry (for a detailed
review, see Oh and Parks, 1996). When todays market conditions as well as increas-
ingly diversifying customer preferences are considered, the importance of service
quality and customer satisfaction is expected to grow further.
Despite these increased customer-oriented marketing efforts in the hospitality
industry, relatively little attention has been given to the process of service design.
Although most research programs have focused on measuring customer perceptions
of service quality and satisfaction, few have provided company-specific guidelines for
how to design services to meet the quality standards expected by customers. That is,
the extant service quality and satisfaction programs were developed primarily as
a tool to diagnose a companys service performance and to understand consumer
purchase behavior, but they have not considered actively the intra-organizational
service development processes that can support the marketing initiatives of hospital-
ity firms.
Service design or development processes should be emphasized in every service
quality and satisfaction program in the hospitality industry. Although the ongoingquality improvement programs can provide hospitality managers with useful informa-
tion about the companys performance and its customers, improvement in service
quality and customer satisfaction cannot occur unless the obtained information is
successfully incorporated into subsequent service deliveries. Berry, et al. (1994) ob-
served that 2Design flaws in any part of a service system can reduce quality. It is
tempting to blame poor quality on the people delivering service but frequently the real
culprit is poor service system design (p.37). This is particularly true when service
design is viewed not only as a new product development process but also as innova-
tions in existing products and services. In this context, the industrys endeavor for high
quality and customer satisfaction must be targeted towards a continuous chain of
activities including delivering products/services, understanding customers, redesign-
ing or innovating products/services, and redelivering improved products/services.
The purpose of this paper is to propose for the hospitality industry a systematic,
structured approach, called Quality Function Deployment (QFD), to designing new or
renovating extant services with a focus on both external customer needs and internal
service management requirements. Therefore, the QFD framework proposed in this
paper is to be viewed as a comprehensive model integrating market demands intointernal research and development (R and D) activities. The concept of QFD and its
relationship to related concepts are explained first, followed by an overview of the
QFD model and the general model building process. Then, an illustrative QFD model
applied to the lodging industry is developed to facilitate future applications and
understanding of the process. The strengths and weaknesses of general QFD models
are discussed with suggestions for future hospitality research in this direction.
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2. The concept of QFD
Quality Function Deployment was introduced in 1972 at the Kobe shipyard of
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (Ansari and Modarress, 1994). The concept further
evolved through an application by the Toyota Motor Company and its suppliers aswell as through extensive research by the Quality Function Deployment Research
Committee of the Japan Society for Quality Control (King, 1987). Major automobile
companies such as General Motors and Ford Motor Co. and manufacturing com-
panies such as 3M, HewlettPackard, and Texas Instruments introduced QFD to
American industry in the early 1980s. Griffin and Houser (1993) estimated that more
than 100 US firms applied the QFD model in 1991. The results of QFD applications
have been remarkable with, for example, 60% reductions in design costs and 40%
reductions in design time in early applications (Houser and Clausing, 1988). Although
the concept of QFD was originally developed and widely adopted by manufacturing
companies for product development purposes, QFD researchers have argued that the
framework can be applied in non-manufacturing environments such as airlines, hotels,
and utilities (Ansari and Modarress, 1994).
It is not easy to define QFD due to its comprehensive and detailed nature. Bicknell
and Bicknell (1995) simply define QFD as a systematic approach mapping the
customers needs into definable and measurable product and process parameters,
using matrices and other quantitative and qualitative techniques (p. 28). As implied
in the definition, QFD translates market demands (i.e., customer needs) into functionsimplementable in management decision processes. Furthermore, QFD bases its gen-
eral model building process on both qualitative and quantitative customer research
and close cooperation among the functional units of the organization. In essence,
QFD takes into account not only the customers but also the organizational process.
Distinction should be made among related concepts. QFD can be viewed as one of
the key techniques in the TQM process (Dean and Bowen, 1994). While TQM focuses
on the continuous improvement of inputoutput effectiveness across the entire scope
of the organization, QFD can be viewed as an application of the TQM philosophy to
new product development (Lockamy and Khurana, 1995). QFD also differs from
recently introduced service quality and customer satisfaction research paradigms such
as SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry, 1988) in that it provides struc-
tured guidelines for re-designing services as well as developing new products, rather
than simply describing or measuring service quality and customer satisfaction.
3. Overview of the QFD model
3.1. The house of quality
The overall process of QFD is based on its core matrix framework, called the house
of quality, which is used to intertwine customer needs, service design/management
requirements, target design goals, and competitive product/service evaluations. Fig. 1
displays the house of quality and its components. Although this paper presents only
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a basic skeleton of the house of quality, the framework is always expandable both
vertically and horizontally depending upon the characteristics of the organization and
its market.
3.2. Components of the house
As can be seen in Fig. 1, the house of quality consists of several components and
each component needs to be built into the house in an orderly manner. Fig. 1 illus-
trates the procedure of building the house of quality by the numerical order. For
instance, customer needs must be first identified and placed on the left side of the
house (Step 1). Next, these customer needs are quantified and ranked in order of
importance (Step 2). Step 2 also includes conducting comparative analyses of key
competitors based on the customer needs identified in Step 1. In the third step,
management needs to specify service design and management requirements across all
relevant functional units of the organization from an organizational perspective.
Fig. 1. The house of quality the framework.
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Management then has to determine intuitively the degree of contribution made by
each of the service design/management requirements in meeting specified customer
needs (Step 4). The fifth step determines the relative weight of each service de-
sign/management requirement based upon customer needs. Finally, the construction
of the house of quality is completed by examining the pairwise correlations betweenthe service design/management requirements themselves and by placing the correla-
tions in the roof area (Step 6). Further descriptions of each component as well as the
working methods of building a house of quality are given below.
4. Applications of the QFD model
Only a few QFD attempts are found in the service arena. For example, FloridaPower and Light implemented QFD and, as a result, shortened customer waiting
time, thereby improving customer satisfaction (Graessel and Zeidler, 1993). QFD was
also applied to a distance education program and the results were improvement in
service quality, reduced curriculum design times, and increased student satisfaction
(Murgatroyd, 1993). Berkley (1996) recently attempted to explore the QFD frame-
work with a nightclub service example. Unfortunately, however, few studies have
demonstrated the applicability of QFD in the hospitality, and especially lodging,
industry.
4.1. An illustration
Building on the recent applications of QFD in the service environment, this study
has developed a hypothetical example in an effort to illustrate how the QFD model
can be applied to lodging and possibly to other hospitality services. To enhance the
practical applicability of the QFD process in the lodging and other hospitality
industries, this section is devoted to explicating step-by-step procedures in construct-
ing a house of quality. Useful conceptual discussions on difficulties in applying QFDto intangible services are found elsewhere (Berkley, 1996). Fig. 2 presents the hypo-
thetical house of quality with its detailed contents. The house was built utilizing
a spreadsheet program (i.e., MS Excel). The process of developing this example is
explained below in detail.
Step 1. Identifying customer needs: Customer needs are identified typically through
survey research, focus group discussion, or personal interview. The key question to be
asked here is what the customers need (or want or expect) from the company.
Customer needs can be expressed on detailed service attributes; these attributes can begrouped either by their characteristics or by utilizing factor analysis techniques.
This studys example tentatively adopted and modified some service attributes and
their relative dimensions from Parasuraman et al.s (1994) research. For example,
customer needs can be expressed along the reliability dimension, which can be
measured with multiple attributes including services done right the first time, correct
billing, and problem handling. Similarly, customer needs can be measured on the
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Fig.
2.Thehouseofquality
anillustration.
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promptness of services and employees willingness to help, both of which comprise
a responsiveness dimension. To measure the quality of tangibles, three items were
adopted: modern equipment, visual appearance of the facilities, and professional
appearance of the staff.
Step 2. Prioritizing customer needs and conducting competitive benchmarking: Sev-
eral tasks are involved in this step. The customer value column in Fig. 2 contains the
customers importance rating of each need attribute that can be obtained directly from
market research. The importance of the need attributes can be measured on a 7-point
1"not at all important to 7"very important scale. For example, the customers
may rate correct billing as very important (7).
Columns service performance, competitor A, and competitor B indicate the cus-
tomers, or alternatively the managements, perceptions of the current performance
by the company and its competitors in each of the customer need attributes,
respectively. The current performance can be replaced with the ability to perform in
the case of new service development or design. In this way, the company is directly
compared to its competitors. Both current performance and ability to perform can be
measured again on a 7-point 1"poor to 7"excellent scale. In the present
example, the promptness of service was rated as 4 for the company, 5 for competitor
A, and 4 for competitor B.
The management also sets the performance goal for each need attribute and
determines the sales point based on its experience. Consistently, the scale used toexpress the performance goal of each attribute is a 7-point 1"poor to 7"excellent
rating scale. Management should be realistic in setting a performance goal, based on
the availability or ability of the companys resources. Sales points are the evaluation of
features that would directly influence a sale and they are graded effectively on a rating
scale with three anchoring points: 1.5 indicates a feature that is a significant sales point
(i.e., the company has a big advantage when it meets customer needs on that attribute);
1.2 is a moderately powerful sales point (i.e., a slight competitive advantage); and 1 is
assigned to features that have no sales-point impact (i.e., no competitive advantage at
all) (Bicknell and Bicknell, 1995; Cohen, 1988). While different sets of scale with
different numeric anchoring values may be considered for sales point evaluations,
research to date shows that this 3-point rating scale (i.e., with numeric anchoring
values of 1.5, 1.2, and 1) is most effective (King, 1987).
The improvement ratio is computed by dividing the performance goal by the current
service performance. For example, the improvement ratio of 1.5 for the problem
handling attribute was obtained by dividing its performance goal of 6 by its current
service performance of 4. This ratio gives a weighted value for the customer needs that
would require improvement (Bicknell and Bicknell, 1995).The raw importance weight of customer needs is the product of the three elements,
i.e., customer value, the improvement ratio, and the sales point. For example, the raw
weight of 13.5 for prompt service is the product of its customer value of 6, its
improvement ratio of 1.5, and its sales point of 1.5. These weights provide the rank
order of the customer needs according to the combined assessment of the importance
of meeting the need, the amount of improvement the company wishes to achieve, and
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the extent to which the need could be used to directly influence sales of the service
(Cohen, 1988).
The relative weights are normalized values of the raw weights; they are computed by
dividing the raw weight of each individual need attribute by the column sum. For
example, the relative weight of 6% for modern equipment is obtained by dividing itsraw weight of 4.8 by the column sum of 74, times 100. The relative weight is often used
for prioritizing service design/management requirements to meet customer needs
effectively.
Finally, relative weights and competitive benchmarking are graphically represented
to visualize the importance of customer needs and the current performance of the
company as compared to that of its competitors.
Step 3. Developing service design/management requirements: Service design/manage-
ment requirements are specified on the basis of the companys operational or manage-rial resource allocation plans in order to satisfy the customers. The key question to
ask in this step is how the company delivers services. These requirements can be
easily grouped by such functional service units as the front desk, housekeeping, and
food and beverage department. In Fig. 2, for example, the arrangement is based on
management control or service delivery system. That is, hotel management may want
to focus on staff courtesy, fast check-in, and professional handling of guest complaints
in its front office operations. Similarly, cleanliness, timely arrangement of sales, and
room items in working order may be key managerial control points in housekeeping
operations. Management can also develop and arrange the requirements in a way to
meet the customer needs, depending upon the organizational characteristics. Addi-
tional functional units and requirements can be added as needed.
Step 4. Constructing the relationship matrix between customer needs and service
design/management requirements: Each of the service design/management require-
ments is correlated individually to each of the customer need attributes by considering
to what extent a requirement contributes to meeting customer needs for the attribute.
This step requires extensive cooperation and strong consensus among managers of
functional units, based on their expertise in and experiences with service processes.
Depending upon the impact of the requirement on meeting customer needs for the
attribute, management assigns a 0"no relationship, 1"possible relationship,
3"moderate relationship, and 10"strong relationship (Cohen, 1988). For
example, courtesy of the front desk staff was thought to strongly influence the
customers need for employees high willingness to help the customers; consequently,
a ten point was assigned to the cell of these two attributes. In a similar way, a zero
point was assigned to the cell for cleanliness in housekeeping services by the cus-
tomers need for correct billing, indicating no relationship between the two.Ideally, managers of all functional units participate in determining the strength of
the relationship. Although a complete consensus among managers is desired for each
cell, discrepancies can be resolved through reconciliation. Teamwork or individual
interview techniques can be used for this purpose. The process of constructing the
relationship matrix promotes strong cooperation among managers and, conse-
quently, close cooperation among the functional units of the organization.
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Step 5. Prioritizing service design/management requirements: The raw importance
and relative weight of each service design/management requirement are computed
using the relationship matrix and the relative importance of each customer need
attribute. The accuracy of the results in this step relies heavily on the quality of the
relationship matrix. The raw importance weight of each service design/managementrequirement is calculated by summing across the products of the relationship strength
(i.e., the cell value assigned in the relationship matrix) and the relative weight of the
customer need attribute (i.e., the value in the last column). For example, the raw
importance weight of sanitation requirement in food and beverage services can be
computed as follows
Service attribute Sanitation requirement Relative weight
First service 1 ; 15 "15
Correct billing 0 ; 20 "0
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
Professional appearance 10 ; 6 "60
Sum "268
This computation process intertwines customer needs with service design/manage-
ment requirements. That is, the resulting value determines the relative weight of each
of the requirements as compared to customer needs.
As in the case of the relative weights of customer needs, the relative weights of
service design/management requirements are calculated by dividing the individual
raw importance weight of each requirement by its row sum (i.e., normalization). For
example, the relative weight of 13% for the fast check-in requirement at the front desk
is obtained by dividing its raw weight of 559 by its row sum of 4385. The relative
weights determine the key service design/management requirements that can help
satisfy customer needs. Also implied in the relative weights are the deploymentstrategies of service functions or requirements. Finally, the relative weights are
presented in graph to provide quick insight into key requirements.
Step 6. Determining interactions between pairs of service design/management re-quirements: The final step of the QFD model building is that management determines
the degree of the functional relationship for each pair of service design/management
requirements. The derivation of the relationship may also be based on the degree of
necessary collateral efforts between the two functional units involved. In the present
example, four different degrees of relationship (i.e., none, possible, moderate, andstrong) were considered for each pair of the requirements, using different symbols. For
example, the friendliness requirement of the food and beverage staff was thought to
have a moderate relationship with the fast check-in and complaint handling require-
ments at the front desk. Thus their relationships were marked with a box (see Fig. 2).
The house also shows that the food quality requirement does not have any opera-
tional relationship with the three requirements in housekeeping services.
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The relationship marks in the roof area of the house have two usages. If they are
identified early in the QFD process, they may indicate the required level of coopera-
tion among functional unit managers in constructing the house of quality. When the
relationship roof is used after the completion of the QFD process, it points to the
degree of cooperation among the managers in service delivery to effectively meetcustomer needs.
4.2. Analysis of the house of quality and action measures
The house of quality illustrated above has a number of implications if applied to
a real situation. A few of them are discussed here as examples, while great many
detailed analyses are reserved for future studies. First, the house of quality provides
management with a concrete importance structure of customer needs as well as the
service design/management requirements. The graphic representations of the import-
ance structure are likely to be helpful to service designers and managers in configuring
service strategies tailored to customer needs. For example, the illustrative house of
quality shows that the customers needs are higher in both reliability and responsive-
ness service attributes than in tangible attributes. In this case, as Berry et al. (1994)
exhorted, hotel companies must train employees for providing promised perfor-
mances on such intangible attributes as the friendliness of the food and beverage staff,
fast check-in, and the courtesy of the front desk staff. This training need in such
intangible areas is clearly shown, as a result of the QFD process, by the graphicrepresentation of the service design/management requirements at the bottom of the
house. In this way, the QFD process translates customers high needs in both
reliability and responsiveness attributes into internal service design requirements.
Depending upon the results of an actual QFD process, management may change its
deployment strategies of resources.
Second, the companys current service performance or capability to perform to
meet customer needs is vividly compared to that of its key competitors. This competi-
tion analysis shows that the hypothetical hotel is not performing as well as its two
competitors in meeting overall customer needs. The graphic presentation on the
rightmost side of the house visualizes this point. In particular, the hotel is shown to
underperform its two competitors in handling problems and helping customers.
Therefore, for the hotel to compete successfully in the marketplace, the hotel manage-
ment again should emphasize educating employees on how to handle guest com-
plaints and problems as well as building proper service attitudes among employees.
Despite the high strategic value of competition analysis like this, most extant service
quality and customer satisfaction programs have not addressed this aspect systemati-
cally.Another analysis can be illustrated by focusing on the roof area. Although coopera-
tion among functional service units has not been emphasized sufficiently in many
service quality and customer satisfaction efforts, the hypothetical house of quality
shows that there is a need for cooperation among them, at least at a functional level, in
delivering services. Teamwork was one of the ten most important lessons learned from
previous service quality studies, as Berry et al. (1994) said service-performance
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shortfalls are highly correlated with the absence of teamwork (p. 41). Organizing
cross-functional teams in which service providers from different parts of the service
chain are grouped to serve a common set of customers may be effective in this case. To
this end, the QFD framework provides an excellent opportunity for such an organiza-
tional effort to maneuver strong cross-functional collaboration. Positive implicationsand interpretations of the QFD model could go on.
4.3. Reliability and validity
The reliability of a QFD model depends critically on the internal consistencies of
the derived relative importance between customer needs and service design/manage-
ment requirements. In essence, similar items between customer needs and manage-
ment requirements should demonstrate a corresponding significance (or carry an
equivalent weight) in the house of quality. This will enable management to rely firmly
on the QFD-driven discriminant weights for the design requirements as a means to
meet customer needs effectively. Evidence of the internal consistency exists in the
example. The relative weight column indicates that customer needs for correct billing,
prompt service, service right the first time, professional problem handling, and
employees willingness to help customers were relatively important, all exceeding 14%
in their importance. The QFD model successfully translated this importance structure
of customer needs into the relative importance such similar management requirements
as friendliness of the food and beverage personnel, fast check-in, front-desk staffcourtesy, timely room arrangement, and keeping room items in working order. This
was well reflected in the relative weight row of the house. Thus, it can be said that the
QFD model successfully translated what customers want into how management
should design and deliver services.
A similar pattern is also found by comparing relatively unimportant customer
needs for the tangible items to the resulting unimportant management requirement
items such as food quality and sanitation which could be rather visual in customer
perceptions. Therefore, it would seem that, once constructed with care, the QFD
model will be reliable. Also, QFD applications involving actual customer needs and
internal design requirements are believed to establish much clearer reliabilities of the
model because they will tend to reflect the market and organizational conditions
vividly.
The validity of the QFD model may be affected by the specifications and interpreta-
tions of customer needs and service design/management requirements. That is, differ-
ent specifications (e.g., different numbers or levels) of customer needs may produce
different structures of the relative importance of design/management requirements.
This specification problem was one of the points emphasized by Berkley (1996)in function analysis. Thus, management must be careful in generating the items
of customer needs and management requirements. Equally important are precise
interpretations of the need and requirement items. Inaccurate interpretations
can undermine the central correlation matrix in the house of quality and,
consequently, lead to wrongful outcomes. Although this study cannot provide the
results of validity assessments due to the hypothetical nature of the illustrative
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example, future QFD researchers and practitioners must consider validity issues
rigorously.
5. Strengths and weaknesses of QFD
5.1. Strengths
The QFD process, when adopted carefully, offers numerous direct and indirect
benefits to hospitality operators; some of the salient benefits are discussed here. First,
it systematically interfaces external customer needs with a firms service generation
efforts. This point is particularly important in that many other service quality and
customer satisfaction programs concentrate mainly on the external market demand.
In this context, the QFD process can be an excellent tool to close simultaneously all
the five service gaps proposed in service quality model by Parasuraman et al.s
(1985) and Zeithaml et al. (1988) (i.e., the Gaps Model). For example, service gaps
occur when management misperceives customer needs (Gap 1), when services are
misspecified (Gap 2), when services are misdelivered (Gap 3), when services are
miscommunicated (Gap 4), and when service performances do not meet customer
expectations (Gap 5). Customer-defined importance of need attributes in the begin-
ning QFD process minimizes Gap 1. Active participation and strong cooperation
required of functional managers in constructing the relationship matrix contributes tothe elimination of Gaps 24. Then, the closing of Gap 5 is one of the ultimate goals of
the whole QFD process in the long run.
Second, the QFD model offers a realistic opportunity to advance the previously
proposed models to remedy service problems. As a result of more than a decade-long
research program, Berry et al. (1994) found that delivering quality service was in part
a design challenge. They proposed service mapping as one of the ways to improve
service system design. Similarly, Shostack (1984) earlier introduced service blueprints
as a way to diagnose service delivery problems. Nevertheless, these proposals did not
include a specific instrumental method for doing so. When added to service mapping
and blueprinting techniques, the QFD process is expected to provide management
with more actions-oriented guidelines for service design as well as a more holistic view
of the service delivery and design process.
Third, QFD also provides a structured method for proactively designing quality
into a process (Murgatroyd, 1993). Few research paradigms have suggested specific
guidelines for translating market demand into a service companys production pro-
cess. This is particularly critical to service organizations with limited resources.
Therefore, an accurate translation of customer needs into company-specific quality orservice function deployment strategies is the first step for a company seeking to
maximize the output of limited resources. QFD assists management in improving the
process of service design with limited resources.
Fourth, the QFD process promotes not only effective communication but also close
cooperation among functional managers and business units. Strong teamwork was
emphasized by Berry et al. (1994) for service excellence. Because group consensus on
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the assignments of numerical values throughout the house of quality is essential, QFD
participants are required to communicate extensively about both customer needs and
management requirements. This process is likely to help in enhancing cross-functional
relationships within a service organization, which is essential for maintaining
a healthy organization.Another unique feature of QFD is its capability to deal with several key competi-
tors simultaneously. The example in this study included a starting point for consider-
ing competitors in the QFD framework. Assessments of key competitors with regard
to the capabilities of the company as well as the market demand may provide the
company with invaluable strategic visions.
The QFD process also affords a great deal of flexibility in its application. Although
the QFD process may look complicated, companies need not attempt to construct
a house of quality for the entire organization from the beginning. QFD can be
applied to one or two focal functional areas first and companies may expand
the house by including other functional areas later. In the same way, a few strategic
customer needs may be a good starting point for building a house of quality, and
then additional needs can be incorporated periodically. In this way, management
reserves full control over the QFD process based on the companys strategic
intent.
5.2. Weaknesses
Despite the strong potential of QFD for the hospitality industry, several potential
limitations must be considered with future applications. In the first place, QFD relies
heavily on data obtained from the customers through market research and from
functional managers through formal and informal discussions. Thus, inaccurate input
data due to such reasons as response bias and wrongful research methods may
provide unreliable guidelines for service management. Secondly, the entire QFD
process may be a cumbersome procedure, demanding excessive involvement from
various functional units. Once established, however, QFD becomes a baseline process;
subsequent revisions and updates can be done easily thereafter. In particular, when
the house of quality is prepared with spreadsheet programs, as was done in this study,
revisions and expansions are an easy task. Finally, another limitation might be that
the chart may quickly become too large to handle. This problem may be resolved by
reducing the number of service attributes and service design/management require-
ments to a smaller set of key items.
6. Suggestions and directions for future QFD applications
The hypothetical application example presented in this paper provides a general
guideline for applying the QFD process in the hospitality industry. Although the
presented example already covered quite extensive details, some additional hospital-
ity-specific issues are considered in this section in order to facilitate continuing this
line of research in the hospitality and tourism industry.
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(a) Determine a set of key service attributes. Selected service attributes are used to
assess the customers generic needs and wants. The selected attributes then should be
applicable to the selected competitors. Although a number of hospitality researchers
have provided almost exhaustive sets of service attributes (e.g., Callan, 1994), simply
adopting their results does not seem promising since an excessive number of serviceattributes may cause an ineffective QFD process. In addition, the selected list of
attributes must be company-specific as well as competition-oriented.
(b) Specify critical service design/management requirements. Along with the set of
service attributes, careful consideration must be given to identifying the service
design/management requirements. Although the hypothetical example arranged the
requirements by the functional unit for the sake of convenience, it is not a required
method. Alternatively, the requirements may be arranged based on available re-
sources or the companys core competencies or capabilities. A cross-functional speci-
fication of service requirements may be another way. In the same context, QFD
researchers must consider the range of cooperation or involvement among service
performance units of the organization when specifying the requirements.
(c) Establish reliable data collection methods. To increase the outcome of the QFD
process, reliable and valid data generation methods must be developed in advance.
For example, Griffin and Houser (1993) discussed focus group and personal interview
methods as a means of deriving customers reliable importance ratings on service
attributes. A good method of increasing cooperation among QFD participants should
be developed. Though ideal, it is not realistic to have all necessary functionalmanagers at the same place during the entire process of constructing a house of
quality. Thus, alternative methods such as internal surveys or comment cards should
be developed to minimize operational interruptions while maximizing managerial
cooperation.
(d) ake a step-by-step approach. Most hospitality services are multi-functional,
and designing them is thus a challenging process. As discussed earlier, companies need
not attempt to construct a comprehensive QFD chart at one time. It may be too
demanding to cover a fully-loaded large hotel property in a single QFD framework.
The QFD process may well start with a focus on one or two key areas, such as the
front desk and guest rooms, and build up part by part thereafter. Restaurant oper-
ators may apply QFD only to a new menu development process and expand it to the
operations of the entire dining room and kitchen later. The QFD process can still be
applied to developing the optimal marketing mix of a company and its competitors
vying for a common target market.
(e) Be flexible and creative. The house of quality is subject to further expansion,
depending on managerial needs. For instance, the hypothetical house of quality can be
extended to have additional rows and columns. One possibility is that an additionalrow specifies the target level or value of each service design/management requirement.
Similarly, more graphic presentations can be incorporated into the house of quality.
( f) Review and revise. Finally, the process as well as the outcome of QFD needs to
be carefully examined by managers to assure reliability and validity. Because of its
heavy dependence on the data obtained from both the customers and managers, the
outcome of QFD may not be valid with unreliable input data. A sensible choice of the
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need and requirement items and accurate interpretations of the results are crucial to
maximizing the offerings of the QFD model. If the results of the QFD process do not
represent the reality well, a careful review and reconstruction of the house of quality
may be necessary.
7. Summary and concluding remarks
This study attempted to introduce QFD techniques as an extension of TQM and
other service quality and customer satisfaction research paradigms. The value of QFD
as compared to that of the extant research paradigms in the hospitality industry was
discussed. When applied, QFD shows a great deal of potential for improving the
quality of hospitality services and the level of customer satisfaction, thereby increasingcustomer retention and market share. The concept of QFD and its relationship with
other similar concepts were explicated. QFD can be viewed simultaneously as an
extension of and complement to the hospitality industrys endeavor towards service
quality and customer satisfaction. The overall QFD framework was reviewed based
on the house of quality, and a hypothetical application with lodging services was
presented. This study further discussed the strengths and weaknesses of QFD. The
QFD process offers a number of strengths over the conventional service quality and
customer satisfaction programs. Finally, suggestions and directions for future applica-
tions of QFD in the hospitality industry were developed with particular concernsgiven to hospitality-specific issues. Although this study was not able to provide real
application examples from the hospitality industry due to undocumented cases in the
literature, the hypothetical example developed by the study is believed to have
provided a good starting point to consider QFD as the next step towards service
excellence. It would be desirable in the hospitality industry that a systematic, struc-
tured framework becomes available to assist management in developing successful
strategies for the deployment of service functions as well as service innovations.
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About the Authors
Miyoung Jeong is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Hotel, Restaurant, and
Recreation Management at the Pennsylvania State University. Her major area of
interest is the applications and impact of information technology in the hospitality
industry.
Haemoon Oh is an assistant professor in the Department of Hotel, Restaurant, andInstitution Management at the Iowa State University. He earned his doctoral degree
in hospitality marketing from the school of Hotel, Restaurant, and Recreation
Management at the Pennsylvania State University. His major areas of research are
service quality and consumer satisfaction.
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