Library decision making informed by customer values

MCKNIGHT, S., 2010. Library decision making informed by customer values. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

“Customer value” is a much used and, in a number of cases, a misunderstood term, with emphasis placed on a priori categories of what provides value for the customer, rather than an effort to understand value from a customer perspective. The research presented in this thesis spans more than ten years in two academic library services, (one in Australia and the other in the United Kingdom), using a methodology that does not use pre-determined value dimensions but, rather, dimensions identified by the customers themselves. This action research was carried out with different customer segments in the university libraries to identify customer values and irritations. By longitudinal tracking of student satisfaction in the UK university, changes in customer satisfaction were noted and related to interventions agreed by library management based on the research data gathered. The thesis answers four specific research questions. By focussing on customer-defined dimensions of “value” and the concept of “customer irritation”, through use of the Customer Value Discovery methodology, this research has been able to identify a set of core academic library customer values that traditional library benchmarking instruments have not previously highlighted. The attendant results of the application of the methodology to discern these values, and their use to inform subsequent change management processes, show that customer satisfaction is improved if changes are made to services and resources to both deliver customer-defined values and reduce customer-defined irritations.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	McKnight, S.
Date:	2010
Rights:	This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed in the first instance to the author
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Depositing User:	EPrints Services
Date Added:	09 Oct 2015 09:33
Last Modified:	09 Oct 2015 09:33
URI:	http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/68

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