Customer loyalty program based on quality function deployment with fuzzy linguistic preference relation

Abstract

The competition among shopping malls is getting increasingly more intense.<br />In order to enhance corporate competitiveness and profitability, how to<br />retain key loyal customers has become an important issue for the managers of<br />shopping malls. Customer loyalty programs are a universal practice. This<br />study proposes an analytical model for developing the strategic management<br />of customer loyalty programs. Based on quality function deployment, our<br />model constructs a fuzzy relational matrix to integrate the customer<br />benefits and the customer loyalty programs. The results contribute to a<br />better understanding of the different importance of customer benefits with<br />respect to ``Utilitarian benefits'', ``Hedonic benefits'' and ``Symbolic<br />benefits''. The study's findings provide prioritized customer loyalty<br />programs, including ``Newest information transmissions,'' ``Communication<br />service specialists,'' ``Exclusive free gift promotions,'' and ``VIP lounge<br />service,'' which can be used to determine the directions for the improvement<br />of shopping malls. The study has implications for the theory and<br />practitioners. First, it allows the integration of customer benefits in<br />customer loyalty programs and the consideration of VIP customers in<br />the programs. Second, the requirement evaluation considering fuzzy<br />linguistic preferences allows for prioritizing the customer loyalty programs<br />when dealing with uncertainty and vagueness. Finally, this approach helps to<br />obtain more realistic results by integrating fuzzy decision-making into QFD.