A decision support tool for evaluating loyalty and word-of-mouth using model-based knowledge discovery

  • Authors:

  • Benoît Depaire;Koen Vanhoof;Geert Wets

  • Affiliations:

  • Transportation Research Institute, Faculty of Business Economics, Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium;Transportation Research Institute, Faculty of Business Economics, Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium;Transportation Research Institute, Faculty of Business Economics, Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium

  • Venue:
  • IEA/AIE'10 Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on Industrial engineering and other applications of applied intelligent systems - Volume Part I
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

It is crucial for any manager to keep a close watch on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and the customer's intention to recommend the company. In this article, a new decision support tool is developed to support a manager with this task. This tool has been developed with companies in mind that posses limited customer satisfaction data. It uses model-based knowledge discovery to extract the customer's expectation and the expectation-performance compatibility from the data. Two hypotheses are formulated which posit that compatibility between product performance and customer expectation have a positive influence on the customer's intentions. Both hypotheses are supported by the data. Finally, a decision support tool is developed which visualizes the impact of customer satisfaction, product performance and expectation-performance compatibility on the customer's intentions. The decision support tool contains two views which offer the manager important information at a glance.