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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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