Title: Strategising customer voice-based quality improvement for logistics service providers

Authors: Tzong-Ru Lee, Jiun-Hung Lin, S.C. Lenny Koh

Addresses: Department of Marketing, National Chung-Hsing University, No. 250 Kuo-Kuang Road, Taichung, 420, Taiwan. ' Department of Marketing and Logistics, China University of Technology, No. 530, Sec. 3, Jhong-Shan Road, Hukou Township, Hsin Chu County, 303, Taiwan. ' Management School, University of Sheffield, 9 Mappin Street, Sheffield S1 4DT, UK

Abstract: The trend towards supply chain globalisation necessitates that local Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) who face intense competition from global integrated LSPs from other countries must generate their logistics quality improvement strategies based on the voice of their customers in the supply chain to retain customers and reduce the turnover rate. Generating appropriate logistics quality improvement strategies for LSPs according to customer demand is an important issue. This study utilises Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to generate the most appropriate quality improvement strategy. QFD analysis transforms the voice of customer into the preference for quality improvement strategies of LSP companies, enabling the most effective quality improvement strategy to be generated. This study classifies LSP companies into five types according to their organisation characteristics and their customer sources. The best quality improvement strategies are determined with empirical data for each type of LSP company. The differences among the analytical results are compared and discussed further.

Keywords: logistics service providers; LSP; quality function deployment; QFD; quality improvement strategy; supply chain globalisation; supply chain management; value chain management; voice of the customer.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVCM.2007.013304

International Journal of Value Chain Management, 2007 Vol.1 No.3, pp.266 - 280

Published online: 20 Apr 2007 *

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