A holistic fuzzy approach to create competitive advantage via quality management in services industry (case study: life-insurance services)

Purpose In today’s highly competitive business environment, the main approach of all businesses is to optimally provide customers’ requirements and gain their satisfaction and trust. The process of value creation for customers consists of value chain activities which are concentrated on providing maximum level of customers’ needs. The purpose of this paper is to propose a holistic model by which the quality, the transferred value to customers and the firm’s competitive advantage would be improved simultaneously under budget constraint. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a combination of several quality management (QM) tools including SERVQUAL, Kano’s model, quality function deployment and knapsack problem. Moreover, the triangular fuzzy logic is used throughout the model to address data uncertainty and increase the model flexibility. The proposed model includes five steps which are implemented in the case study of life-insurance services. Findings The lack of coordination and cooperation between the people working in the inherently related sections leads to incorrect decisions and also the failure in implementation of adopted decisions. Hence, the interface between quality and strategic management should be well considered in organizations. The model generates an integrated vision to the process of decision making in this interface. The framework has several significant outcomes which would be used by both researchers and practitioners. Research limitations/implications The study shows that the individual elements of decision-making process in the interface between quality and strategic management are related to each other, recommending the need to coordinated and consistent effort between different parts of a firm. The results are limited by the sample size and geography of the survey. Originality/value This paper is among the few in the literature that have presented a holistic and step-by-step approach to the decisions on the intersection between two areas of quality and strategic management, recommending the managers to not have insular look to the issues and try to make a sufficient and efficient relationship between the different sections. This study is an important step in reflecting these relations and the need to create an integrated decision model.