Fuzzy quality function deployment for the customer value with retail services

In this paper we use wholesale store industry as example to explore the characteristics of customer value by two steps. Firstly, through a tow-stage questionnaire and the means-end method, it is shown that the customer value can be represented as a set of self-relevant organized elements and consumers' clusters. Secondly, fuzzy judgment is used to determine the vague cognition of the customer value, and fuzzy quality function deployment and entropy methods are used to determine the intensity of the customer value to develop the competitive model. The resulting fuzzy values can be used to analyze the variance and the importance of the customer value more effectively compared with the crisp values. Furthermore, this paper provides the information spread between crisp values and fuzzy values with different consumers' clusters. The information will make it easier for the retailers to prioritize the customer requirements for customer-oriented service.