Improving service performance for an international container shipping company using index approach: A method and applications

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to provide an alternative approach in importance-performance analysis (IPA) for improving service performance. Two measures, service performance index (SPI) and service improvement score (SIS), will be developed and included in the proposed approach which attempts to utilize both information directly reported by the respondents and indirectly estimated from model estimation as much as possible in IPA. For illustrating the proposed approach, the service performance improvement decision of an international container shipping company is studied. Results indicate that this company only deliveries 75% service quality desired by the customers, and that the service ability of the front-line employees of this company should be the first priority needed to be improved. The differences between the proposed model and the methods in the extant literature will provide managers and researchers further insights for the study of IPA.