A linear programming-based QFD methodology under fuzzy environment to develop sustainable policies in apparel retailing industry


AYDIN N., ŞEKER Ş., Deveci M., Ding W., Delen D.

Journal of Cleaner Production, cilt.387, 2023 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 387
  • Basım Tarihi: 2023
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.135887
  • Dergi Adı: Journal of Cleaner Production
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, PASCAL, Aerospace Database, Business Source Elite, Business Source Premier, CAB Abstracts, Communication Abstracts, INSPEC, Metadex, Pollution Abstracts, Public Affairs Index, Veterinary Science Database, Civil Engineering Abstracts
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Apparel retailing, Competitive analysis, Customer services, Fuzzy linear programming, QFD, IVIF sets
  • Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

As the retailing industry becomes more customer oriented, it struggles with integrating the voice-of-customers into quality development policies, determining accurate customer expectations, and understanding how to incorporate the required store attributes in retailing activities. The aim of this study is to provide managers with a more decisive and sustainable framework to fulfill customer satisfaction by determining the most essential customer needs and gain a competitive advantage by applying a benchmarking process for the whole retailing activities. To essentially support managers in determining and implementing required store attributes, this study develops a sustainable linear programming (LP) based Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology under IVIF-environment. The proposed method determines more accurate customer expectations (CEs) and related service requirements (SRs). Accordingly, while “Clothing Quality”, Price Policy”, and “Staff Behavior” are determined as the most important CEs, “Design of Customer Persona”, “Production Cost”, and “Marketing Applications” are obtained as the most affecting SRs. Since no specific study in the literature addresses uncertainty in CEs and SRs in the apparel retailing industry, we developed an LP-based QFD under the IVIF-environment framework, which reflects the ambiguity and vagueness of the evaluations better. Thus, this study contributes to the literature by proposing a sustainable framework for managers to make decisions that are more effective and take sustainable actions. The companies who want to get the advantage in the apparel retailing industry should follow the methodology provided within this study by adding their business specific dimensions. Lastly, to represent the validity and feasibility of the proposed approach sensitivity and comparison analysis are conducted. The results of comparison show that the LP based QFD method is as consistent as other method but more effective in terms of handling ambiguity and fuzziness of expert evaluations, comprehensively.