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A validation Study of House of Quality key performance indicators
Phase I: Exploratory research; defining member’s needs
Several sources will be used in order to indentify the specific needs of the members that can be
considered as key performance drivers for the online union. One source is the literature research
discussed in chapter two. Exploratory research to define the needs will be done by two types of
planned in-depth interviews.
Interviews with Union experts: The knowledge embedded by experts can be valuable for the
classification of the service aspects desired by the members. Union experts in this case are
employees of De Unie that are in a professional way related to the online union. The knowledge of
experts about the firm and the industry can help in diagnosing the nature of the research problem
(Malhotra and Birks 2003). Three structured interviews will be conducted with members of the
management team of the online union. The results of the interviews are used as input for the in-
depth interviews with members of the online union.
Interviews with members: Based on the results of the in-depth interviews with union experts, semi-
structured in-depth interviews will be held with individual members of the online union. Purpose of
the interviews is to get a deeper understanding of factors that determine member’s perception of
the online union. Important to notice in this case is that all interviewed members are also employee
of De Unie. From this perspective they have a certain double role. While the online union is an
organization that operates on the internet, its members are geographically dispersed over the
Netherlands. For practical reasons I decided to interview employees who are also members of the
online union and therefore located on one of the offices of De Unie. The interviewed members are
selected from different departments in order to get a deeper understanding of the needs from
different perspectives.
The interviews with the union experts and the members of the online union will result in a list of
items that are assumed to be related to the overall performance of the online union. Propositions
will be formulated to test the assumed relationships. The explored items will be validated by
surveying a statistically reliable sample of members of the online union. Results of the exploratory
research are present in chapter 4.
Phase II Quantitative research; online survey
After exploratory research conducted in phase I, an online survey will be used to quantify the
explored items and to test the formulated propositions by advanced statistical techniques. Based on
the SERVQUAL concept, the online survey will collect data of member’s perceptions and expectations
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