Abstract:

Assessing the voice of the student for higher education offers has become a major requisite in the quest for differentiation, quality assurance and of course student delight. Due to the fact that students do not see all service attributes as equally important, universities need to thoroughly categorize those features based on how well they are able to satisfy students' needs. In this scope, the present paper discusses customer value, emphasizes the difference between expected and perceived customer value and finally delineates the main constitutive elements for expected customer value: the functional and emotional value which compose a multidimensional added value concept. The quality engineering literature discussions are transposed in the higher education context, where students become customers for university services. If engaged in a co-creation effort, they are able to provide the necessary added value university services need for a targeted offer and competitive advantage. The new proposed approach merges Kansei engineering processes with expert functional value analysis and quality function deployment (QFD) for an added value result. A new innovative university service is proposed for a renowned higher education organisation situated in the Western part of Romania. Through a student focus group the new service has been described with the help of 157 Kansei words. The Affinity Diagram reduced the number to just 14 essential Kansei words that have been rated through an importance questionnaire by Romanian students. University professionals have delimited and prioritized a number of design features for the new service through a functional analysis. Finally, in a synthesis matrix, the 14 Kansei words (student emotional value) and the design features (expert functional value) are analyzed in order to establish the added value and current rank for each feature. In this way, the specialists take into consideration the value students place on design requirements and are able to allocate resources effectively for an accurate design.

Keywords:

Kansei engineering, Quality Function Deployment, innovation, importance questionnaire, student emotional value.