مدیریت کیفیت خدمات تجارت الکترونیک B2C بر اساس مهندسی فاکتورهای انسانی

This study investigates business-to-customer (B2C) electronic commerce services from a quality management perspective. We propose a novel quality management approach that is based on human factors engineering to manage e-commerce service quality and operate according to customer needs. First, we screen credible quality requirements and determine their weights by integrating Kano’s model with our previous work, including the model of B2C website service quality. Then, we can extract quality characteristics according to image words and credible customer requirements. The weights of the quality characteristics are deduced by refining characteristics through a house of quality reconstruction and mapping customer requirements to characteristics. Finally, based on related theories or viewpoints, the operating practices for quality characteristics entail quantitative output with importance and grades taken into consideration. Our experimental results demonstrate that operating practices can help managers understand e-commerce service quality and have useful implications for companies in the management of e-commerce service quality.

E-service is an interactive, content-centered and Internet-based customer service. It is driven by the customer and integrated with related organizational customer support processes and technologies (Ruyter et al. 2001). E-service quality is defined as the extent to which a Web site facilitates efficient and effective shopping, purchasing, and delivery (Parasuraman et al. 2005), and it is also crucial for differentiating among electronic commerce (e-commerce) providers and gaining competitive advantage (Benaroch and Appari, 2011, Kim and Lee, 2009 and Shaaban and Hillston, 2009). Service quality is increasingly recognized as an important aspect of e-commerce (Santos 2003). Without a quality management approach that guarantees quality from its systems, staff and suppliers, a business will not be able to deliver the appropriate level of service quality to satisfy its customers (Cox and Dale 2001). A stream of research has focused more on identifying the dimensions of e-service quality than on discovering which e-service process attributes can help improve quality (Heim and Field, 2007, Riel et al., 2001, Su et al., 2008, Santos, 2003 and Zhang and Prybutok, 2005). Research is therefore needed to develop insights into a quality management approach that facilitates operation according to customer satisfaction requirements. Our intent is to identify operating practices for e-service quality that managers may use to improve their operations and ensure high e-service quality. Forbes (2002) noted that when e-service is properly integrated with the human touch, the resulting synergies create even higher levels of customer satisfaction while maximizing the business value realized from expenditures on both e-service technologies and call center personnel. The study of ergonomics and human factors uses the knowledge of human abilities and limitations to design systems, organizations, jobs, machines, tools and consumer products for safe, efficient and comfortable use (Helander 1997). The applications of ergonomics have evolved over time with the progress of ergonomic knowledge and research and the emergence of new problems around the world (Carayon and Smith 2000). Strawderman and Koubek (2008) improved the evaluation of service quality based on human factors engineering (HFE). They suggested that, by utilizing human factors theories, tools and techniques, service systems can be improved and made more productive, effective, safe and comfortable for employees and customers. The literatures have been aware of the importance of applying HFE to improve E-service quality, but little literatures have applied the HFE from the perspective of service processes. Shostack (1987) considered that the use of nouns obscures the fundamental nature of services, which are processes instead of objects. This paper fills the gap by identifying customer requirements related to business to customer electronic commerce service (B2CS) processes based on HFE. Miles et al. (2000) researched the HFE e-commerce framework, which consists of 4 categories of dimensions: front-end, criteria management, comparison support and marketplace. They have only applied HFE to the aspects related to the usage of shopping sites by buyers qualitatively. Vandermerwe (1993) noted that the most successful companies have started to consider the entire customer experience, from the pre- to the post-purchase stages. This paper fills the gap by studying quality management in B2CS by applying HFE to the entire B2CS process quantitatively. HFE experts usually apply quality function deployment (QFD) to formulate system specifications (Wickens et al. 2004). Chan and Wu (2002) suggested that QFD is a customer-oriented quality management and product development technique originally used for hard products. However, the QFD concept is applicable to soft services as well. Indeed, it was gradually introduced into the service sector to design and develop quality services. Barnes and Vidgen (2000) suggested that QFD might be adopted as a framework for identifying the website qualities demanded by users. They took interactive factors into consideration in subsequent research, improving WebQual 1.0 and proposing WebQual 2.0 (Barnes and Vidgen 2001). Chang et al. (2009) applied QFD to construct an e-commerce website quality model based on the quality requirements of users. The literatures have applied the HFE tool QFD in the service quality research, but little operating practices have been obtained. Based on HFE theories, experts converted user needs and goals into system specifications (Wickens et al. 2004). This paper fills the gap by determining operating practices for the quality management of B2CS according to customer needs by using QFD. Matzler and Hinterhuber (1998) suggested that one of the benefits of combining QFD with Kano’s method for understanding customer-defined quality is a deeper understanding of customer requirements and concerns. Tan and Pawitra (2001) integrated SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al. 1988) and Kano’s model into QFD to extend the study of service excellence. They suggested that Kano’s model and SERVQUAL can be integrated into QFD to better understand consumer needs. Parasuraman and Zeithaml who proposed the classic SERVQUAL service quality evaluation tool (Parasuraman et al. 1988), worked with Malhotra to generate a tool called E-S-QUAL that evaluates electronic service quality (Parasuraman et al. 2005). In these literatures, the conceptual model of integrating service quality evaluation model and Kano’s model into QFD have only been defined. This paper fills the gap by reporting on empirical research integrating the evaluation indicator system and model of business-to-customer (B2C) websites service quality (EISMB2CWSQ) (Zuo et al. 2010) and Kano’s model with QFD to obtain credible quality requirements (CQRs) of customers and ultimately define operating practices. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the novel quality management approach. We apply this approach to B2CS and discuss our findings in Section 3. The final section discusses the conclusions and significance of our research.

In this paper, B2CS is studied from the perspective of quality management based on HFE. The following research conclusions are obtained. (1) Improvement on input of QRs of B2CS In this section, to ensure that QRs input are comprehensive and credible and that their weights are rational based on HFE, this paper integrates EISMB2CWSQ and Kano’s model to obtain CQRs and defines the weights of CQRs. (2) Building B2CS quality management approach based on HFE This paper analyzes the quality of B2CS by using an improved QFD model based on HFE to propose a 3-part approach to B2CS quality management: obtain CQRs of B2CS, extract B2CS QCs and achieve design indexes of B2CS QCs. Applying the approach with inputs consisting of user’s qualitative and fuzzy B2CS quality needs and defining QCs, design indexes of B2CS QCs can be quantitatively expressed. With quantitative design indexes, this paper can guide B2C enterprises in enhancing the quality of B2CS. The research significance of this paper includes: (1) Standardization of B2CS quality management. It is possible for patterns of B2CS quality management to become increasingly proactive rather than reactive, enhancing customer satisfaction. (2) An HFE framework for B2CS quality management provides a methodology for obtaining CQRs of B2CS and expressing B2CS QC design indexes, improving the overall quality of B2CS.