Investigation Volkswagen Emissions Scandal -Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Investigation Volkswagen Emissions Scandal? Answer: Introduction Service quality can be understood as a type of attitude that is associated with consumer retention and satisfaction (Bakti and Sumaedi 2015). This is for the reason that the consumers prefer employing certain criteria in analyzing service quality through analyzing reliability, assurance, responsiveness, physical aspects along with empathy. The objective of this paper is to analyze the service quality failure in a renowned car manufacturing company named Volkswagen through describing a scenario. It will also analyze the companys service recovery program along with the strategies employed by the company in such incident. The report will also provide recommendations for sustaining consumer loyalty accounting with retention strategy for Volkswagen. Volkswagen is a renowned automobile manufacturer and carmaker all over Europe. The organization is observed to develop components and vehicles for its brands (Blackwelder et al. 2016). The company has its headquarter in Germany and offers auto mobiles and commercial vehicles in Australia and all over the world. Service Process Map SERVEQUAL Model of service quality that is indicated below for Volkswagen recognizes the causes for which gaps were identified in the service offered by the car manufacturing company (Burki 2015). This model has facilitated in identifying gaps between consumer perceptions and expectations that has risen during a service delivery by the automobile company. Through analyzing this model it can be said that Volkswagen failed in providing consumers with superior service of vehicle emission system. Vehicle Emission Scandal of the company was observed to be one of its biggest and expensive project blunders all across the world. The company decided to show qualities of reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy towards being environmentally conscious before launching emission free vehicles (Castille and Fultz 2018). The consumers expected to have emission free cars from Volkswagen that can address the issue of heath concerns caused by the pollutants emitted by most cars. However, the consumers perceived service quality was totally negative than the expected service quality. This is for the reason that few employees of the company realized that some cars might not pass the test of maximum "NO" production level and they decided to cheat. The employees of the company did this through installing a defeat device within the engine of the cars. Such intelligent software device could detect the time when an automobile was about to undergo some test and would make its engine to decrease NO emissions (Jiang et al. 2016). However, when these cars were put into the real-world conditions it world return back to its old and environment damaging ways. The figure below indicates the service process map of Volkswagen. It indicates the process through which the automobile company decided to offer Emission free vehicles to its consumers (Jung, Chilton and Valero 2017). From this process, it can be observed that the company failed in system inspection and testing, staff training, consumer system inspection and factory testing before offering such service. Service marketing and quality management strategies of Volkswagen to attain consumer satisfaction were totally disastrous because of the reason that the companys emission system failed (Kennedy 2016). The company might have easily manufactured their cars in an ethical manner but they decided not to do the same. They took decisions to offer poor quality service relied on anticipated profit margins. The project team could have installed the necessary parts but they deemed that to be highly expensive and decided to install a defeat system. Volkswagen put more emphasis on cost in comparis on to quality and this resulted in downfall of consumer satisfaction due to negative publicity of the company. Analysis The emissions scandal of Volkswagen Company indicates a big service quality failure for the company because of which it lost a huge loyal consumer base. The company decided to deal with competitive pressures, cost control and pressure of increasing profit margin through cheating and offering inferior service quality. The company failed to meet expected consumer quality of offering emission less cars and automobiles (Tse et al. 2017). Such service quality strategy failure was because of the reason that diesel-model cars of Volkswagen came with a price of cheat software. Such software can detect when emission test is run on the cars and ran the engine in order to address the emission standards. While being in the on-testing mode and when such cars run-on-roads they almost emitted pollutants 10 times the limit. The consumers expected superior service from its cars and believed its exceptional practices, innovativeness quality and unquestionable quality. However, the company decided to c ompromise the quality of its cars and failed to attain consumer retention (Volkswagenag.com. 2018). Such service quality failure resulted in gap among consumer expectations and perceptions regarding Volkswagen cars for more than three years. Thereafter, recently the company has entered the Austrian market with its innovative clean diesel model named Jetta. Volkswagen is now striving to position its newly manufactured cars as environmental show stopper and Green car of the year. The automobile companys diesel emission scandal damaged its reputation all over the world. As per the Australian Consumer Satisfaction Index Automobile report few consumer expectation and perception auditing towards the company has been recognized (Bakti and Sumaedi 2015). From such report and the graph above it is gathered that Volkswagens consumer satisfaction score decreased gradually from 100 to 78 that is lower in comparison to other car brands. The decline of the companys brand image resulted in decrease of overall consumer satisfaction for the companys cars. From such service quality failure, 86% of the Volkswagen drivers were concerned regarding the environmental effect of their vehicle, 83% of them questioned about its resale value and 73% doubted the performance of their cars (Jung, Chilton and Valero 2017). Most of the companys consumers stated that they will put off purchasing a diesel car from Volkswagen in the upcoming years. Recommendation and Service Recovery Strategy The recommended actions that the company, Volkswagen, might undertake in order to bring in improvement in the service quality of the emission free car are being discussed in this section of the report. Undertaking a market research for determining the trends and the requirements of the customers for an environment friendly car Bring forth modifications in the design of the cars in order to make them more like the emission free cars. Modification helps in determining the progress of the organization in the fields of quality. Quality of the product helps in determining the brand loyalty and is reflected through the performance of the organization in the market. A clear and steady promotional strategy for ensuring the customers with the quality of the product that is being delivered as per the requirement of the clients. Promotional strategy helps in communicating with the customers of the organization and makes them aware of the changes that are undertaken by the organization in order to enhance the quality. The proper communication helps in linking the stakeholders of the organization and thereby brings in integrated and smooth functioning of the enterprise. The proper understanding of the factors that affected the growth of the company and the modifications in the design of the no-emission car must be ensured. Monitoring over the products that are being manufactured by the organization. It helps in maintaining the quality of the products and results to customer satisfaction. The modifications that the organization must undertake are based on the requirements of the customers of an environment friendly car. On the other hand, the company must also ensure the quality of the cars based on their campaign of no-emission vehicle and its applicability. It will be helping the organization in retaining the trust of the customers in the market. Conclusion The objective of this paper was to analyze the service quality failure in a renowned car manufacturing company named Volkswagen through describing a scenario. It also analyzed the companys service recovery program along with the strategies employed by the company in such incident. It is gathered from analysis in the report that the Company decided to show qualities of reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy towards being environmentally conscious before launching emission free vehicles. However, the perceived service quality was totally negative than the expected service quality by the consumers. This is for the reason that few employees of the company realized that some cars might not pass the test of maximum "NO" production level and they decided to cheat. Considering same, certain effective recommendations and service recovery strategies are also provided for the company in improving its service quality. This can further facilitate the company in retaining its consumers . Monitoring over the products that are being manufactured by the organization is recommended. It helps in maintaining the quality of the products and results to customer satisfaction. The modifications that the organization must undertake are based on the requirements of the customers of an environment friendly car. References Bakti, I.G.M.Y. and Sumaedi, S., 2015. P-TRANSQUAL: a service quality model of public land transport services.International Journal of Quality Reliability Management,32(6), pp.534-558. Blackwelder, B., Coleman, K., Colunga-Santoyo, S., Harrison, J.S. and Wozniak, D., 2016. The Volkswagen Scandal. Burki, T.K., 2015. Diesel cars and health: the Volkswagen emissions scandal.The Lancet Respiratory Medicine,3(11), pp.838-839. Castille, C. and Fultz, A., 2018, January. How Does Collaborative Cheating Emerge? A Case Study of the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal. InProceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Jiang, K., Hu, J., Hong, Y., Liao, H. and Liu, S., 2016. Do it well and do it right: The impact of service climate and ethical climate on business performance and the boundary conditions.Journal of Applied Psychology,101(11), p.1553. Jung, K., Chilton, K. and Valero, J.N., 2017. Uncovering stakeholders in publicprivate relations on social media: a case study of the 2015 Volkswagen scandal.Quality Quantity,51(3), pp.1113-1131. Kennedy, S., 2016. Corporate Sustainability Green Cities. Smith, J. and Palmqvist, J., 2016. Economics: ImpossibleCSR Protocol: A quantitative study of brand trust and the Big Five personalities. Strittmatter, A. and Lechner, M., 2017. Sorting on the Used-Car Market After the Volkswagen Emission Scandal. Teeroovengadum, V., Kamalanabhan, T.J. and Seebaluck, A.K., 2016. Measuring service quality in higher education: Development of a hierarchical model (HESQUAL).Quality Assurance in Education,24(2), pp.244-258. Tse, Y.K., Zhang, M., Doherty, B., Chappell, P., Moore, S.R. and Keefe, T., 2017. Exploring the hidden pattern from tweets: Investigation into Volkswagen emissions scandal. InSupply Chain Management in the Big Data Era(pp. 172-198). IGI Global. Volkswagenag.com., 2018.Volkswagen Group Homepage. [online] Available at: https://www.volkswagenag.com/ [Accessed 31 Jan. 2018].