MODEL FOR SELECTING QUALITY STANDARDS FOR A SALAD BAR THROUGH IDENTIFYING ELEMENTS OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Continuous quality improvement is the new requirement of the Joint Com mission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. This means that meeting quality standards will not be enough. Dietitians will need to improve those standards and the way they are selected. Because is defi ned in terms of the customers, all quality improvement projects must s tart by defining what customers want. Using a salad bar as an example, this article presents and illustrates a technique developed in Japan to identify which elements in a product or service will satisfy or dis satisfy consumers. Using a model and a questionnaire format developed by Kano and coworkers, 273 students were surveyed to classify six qual ity elements of a salad bar. Four elements showed a dominant ''must-be '' characteristic: food freshness, labeling of the dressings, no spill s in the food, and no spills on the salad bar. The two other elements (food easy to reach and food variety) showed a dominant one-dimensiona l characteristic. By better understanding consumer perceptions of qual ity elements, foodservice managers can select quality standards that f ocus on what really matters to their consumers.