Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
In recent years, importance of service has been recognized in various industries. According to Kosaka (2012), a service is an action for a provider to fulfill the purpose of a customer and increase satisfaction. Therefore, the marketing theory (Lovelock & Wright, 2002) that helps us understanding customers' needs and behaviors, and an academic fields of service science (Bemd & Kai & Anja Kremer & Achim, 2009) have developed to improve the service furthermore. The service industry has many variations, the contents of the service, the attributes of the provider, and the type of compensation may be different in each industry. However, in any cases, it is important to raise the satisfaction level of customers. For that reason, in service science field, “One to one marketing” (Peppers & Rogers & Dorf, 1999), “The moment of truth” by provider-customer interaction (Normann, 1984) and the concept such as “Service profit chain” (Heskett & Jones & Loveman & Sasser & Schlesinger, 2008) referred to importance of the close relationship between providers and customers. The theme is “How can providers provide services which suit individual customers?”
In this article, we will focus on social infrastructure service. Social infrastructure service is a service provided as a basis for living such as transportation, electricity, gas, water supply, communication. Since modernization, it has been developed and operated mainly as a public project by nation, and it contributed to the improvement of the quality of citizen’s life. Customers use social infrastructure service as a matter of course in their daily lives without consciousness of payment of consideration.
As the development of social infrastructure has progressed, quality has become more important required than quantity. For instance, since the 1980s in Japan, deregulation, privatization, and liberalization progressed in railway, aviation, road, communication, power and other fields. Each provider had to improve service level, compete to survive, while keeping on providing equivalent services to citizens as a social infrastructure service provider.
Also, for social infrastructure service as one of an important service category, we think we should carry out academic approach. However, “The direct interaction between providers and customers”, which is the important premises in existing service model, is rarely observed in social infrastructure service. Therefore, we cannot investigate social infrastructure service with existing service model. Furthermore, the provider tends to need many costs when they provider social infrastructure service. Therefore, we would like to propose a new service model which present the several characteristics of social infrastructure service in this paper.
In section 2, we will explain the characteristics of social infrastructure services based on the concept of SLA (Service Level Agreement) and propose Social Infrastructure Service Level Agreement (SISLA) model as a conceptual model. In section 3, we will propose a methodology (SISLA evaluation model) to evaluate the service value of providers, and in section 4, we will apply this model to a test case.
Finally, in section 5, we will apply the SISLA evaluation model to an actual case of transport service as an example of social infrastructure services, and we will show the validity of the SISLA model as one of an application of service model.