A novel framework for customer-driven service strategies: A case study of a restaurant chain

• We propose a quality–performance analysis for quality improvement strategies.
• We develop the strategic positioning portfolio for service activity design.
• We propose a signal-to-noise method for classifying Kano’s quality attributes.
• We use a real case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Importance–performance analysis (IPA) is a popular customer-driven tool that enables companies to understand market competition and identify improvement priorities for various attributes of products and services. Despite the widespread use of IPA, previous studies have identified specific deficiencies. For example, the managerial improvement directions derived from IPA are potentially misleading because they ignore the asymmetric and nonlinear relationships between attribute performance (AP) and customer satisfaction (CS). Furthermore, the relationship between AP and importance is erroneously assumed to be independent. By contrast, the Kano model offers useful insight into quality attributes based on the asymmetric and nonlinear relations between AP and CS. In this study, a customer-driven framework is proposed, integrating the advantages of traditional IPA and the Kano model to elucidate the market competition position of each service and product attribute, providing strategic improvement guidelines for managers to design service activities. By conducting a case study of a restaurant chain, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.