Assessing Customer Satisfaction of Airport Train Service: An Application of the Kano Model

Abstract

Every service firm must find ways to attract new customers, retain existing customers, and remain competitive and profitable. As competition increases, pursuing customer satisfaction becomes more important in this particular global market competitiveness. Previously, traditional methods believe that customer satisfaction and quality attributes have a linear relationship. In other words, customers might feel satisfied when certain quality attribute can be provided by the service provider; yet they might not feel satisfied when the quality attribute is missing. Nevertheless, this relationship is not that linearly simple. In some quality attributes, indeed an improvement in performance of the service attribute can significantly improve customer satisfaction; while on the other case, the customers might still accept the absence of a quality attribute without being dissatisfied. This phenomenon has been identified by the Kano model which uses a different approach to treat the relationship between customer satisfaction and quality attributes as two-dimensional terms. This research aims to evaluate customer satisfaction of airport train service by utilizing the Kano model. Eighteen attributes were employed in a case study that exhibited the application of the Kano model to assess customer satisfaction. By implementing the Kano model, it is intended to provide a strategy for the service provider to improve customer satisfaction.