A Proposed Framework of Kansei Engineering Application in Dealing with Customer Emotional Needs in Services

Many studies on product designs have been widely conducted with a focus on functionality rather than human emotions. However, customers today are very dynamic and no longer focus only on functionality needs. Emotions increasingly, play an important role in purchasing decision. In dealing with customer emotional needs, Kansei Engineering is proposed. This approach captures customers’ desires and feelings (emotions/kansei) concerning products and translates these emotional needs into concrete product design. Kansei Engineering has been applied extensively in product design, but not in services. A service is an intangible product. It is the fastest growing sector in today’s businesses. Some prominent tools such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Kano’s Model are often used in services, but not incorporating customer emotional needs. In addition, some attentions have been widely used in investigating customer emotional satisfaction in services. However, there is not a formal methodology that can account for customer emotional needs. Therefore, to fill in these niches, this paper provides a proposed framework of Kansei Engineering in services. The proposed framework incorporates QFD and Kano’s Model as methods which focus on customer satisfaction. By applying Kano’s Model, customer needs are exploited through a questionnaire, and, service attributes are classified. QFD is then used to transform customer emotional needs into engineering characteristics. In addition, other models such as Bayesian Network (BN) and Markov Chain are utilized as well. The latter two models are useful to promote prediction and diagnostic inference with a probability view point due to the dynamics of customer emotional needs. The use of such supporting models will enhance the ability of the Kansei Engineering methodology to meet a sudden change or trend of customers’ emotional needs. Essentially, the proposed framework will start and end with customers to achieve customer emotional satisfaction. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the Kansei Engineering approach in service design, this paper provides an illustration. A simple literature survey was conducted at a university field. A majority of the students spend most of their time on campus. Why do students spend so much time at the university when they can better spend their time elsewhere, such as at home? How can a university be made a convenient second home for students? In this research, these two questions will be answered and tackled by introducing a modified Kansei Engineering method. The university does not only provide an academic service, but also an emotional experience for students. It is hoped that by introducing an improved innovative framework of Kansei Engineering, it could increase the level of customer satisfaction in pursuit of customer loyalty and a long-term relationship eventually.