Developing a 3-Dimensional Model of Importance-Performance-Cost Analysis for Prioritizing the Quality Attributes of Mobile Phone Operator Services

In today's competitive world, discovering the needs and desires of customers and fulfilling them before competitors is the condition for success for companies. Therefore, organizations and business enterprises try to achieve a privileged position compared to other competitors by achieving unique advantages. This study aims to develop the importance-performance analysis by adding the cost dimension. Then, measure and compare the quality of the services of two communication networks, Hamrahe Aval, and Irancell, using the developed approach of Importance-Performance-Cost Analysis (3-D IPCA) and proposing the optimal strategy to improve service quality. For this purpose, were identified the relevant attributes by studying the literature, then provided to the experts in the form of a questionnaire for final confirmation. Finally, 20 attributes were identified in determining the quality of mobile phone operators' services. The questionnaire was distributed among 400 Ferdowsi University of Mashhad students as a convenience sample. Then it was analyzed using three-dimensional IPCA analysis.The results showed that among the users of the Hamrahe Aval network, the quality of providing services and customer support, and among the users of the Irancell network, network coverage and ease of use of services have the highest and lowest priorities for improvement, respectively. Also, Irancell's performance has been better considering the cost aspect. The comparison of IPA and IPCA shows that  IPCA considering the cost as a third dimension can obtain more accurate analyzes of customers' opinions. Moreover, managers can make more rational decisions with this tool.