A FUZZY DECISION MAKING APPROACH IN EVALUATING FERRY SERVICE QUALITY

The service quality evaluation is undeniably important especially in highly competitive service related industry. However, service quality evaluation is not always straightforward as criteria in evaluation and customer perceptions toward services are intangible measures. This paper presents a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach for evaluating the service quality of ferry that transport customers between the mainland of Peninsular Malaysia and a tourist spot island. Service quality is a composite of various criteria, among them many criteria are intangible and difficult to measure. Fuzzy numbers and linguistic level based on fuzzy sets theory as a method to overcome vaguely judgment in evaluation. The crisp survey results were collected via a ten-service criteria questionnaire from eighty seven customers and computed using Best non-Fuzzy Performance and Degree of Similarity. Based on the concept of the defuzzification, the ranking of service performance is obtained. Degree of Similarity provides the level of satisfaction and its degrees for each criterion. The criterion of ‘service efficiency of ferry personnel’ was the first in the ranking. All the criteria received ‘good’ and ‘very good’ for the level of satisfaction. These evaluation results facilitate the ferry operator to upgrade its ferry services and eventually meet its customers’ needs.Service quality, fuzzy number, satisfaction level, defuzzification.

Evaluation of e-learning web sites using fuzzy axiomatic design based approach

High quality web site has been generally recognized as a critical enabler to conduct online business. Numerous studies exist in the literature to measure the business performance in relation to web site quality. In this paper, an axiomatic design based approach for fuzzy group decision making is adopted to evaluate the quality of e-learning web sites. Another multi-criteria decision making technique, namely fuzzy TOPSIS, is applied in order to validate the outcome. The methodology proposed in this paper has the advantage of incorporating requirements and enabling reductions in the problem size, as compared to fuzzy TOPSIS. A case study focusing on Turkish e-learning websites is presented, and based on the empirical findings, managerial implications and recommendations for future research are offered

Service Quality and Customer Loyalty in a Post-Crisis Context. Prediction-Oriented Modeling to Enhance the Particular Importance of a Social and Sustainable Approach

Research into the influence of service quality on customer loyalty has typically focused on confirming isolated direct causal influences regarding particular dimensions of quality, usually undertaken in the context of positive, firm-customer relations. The present study extends analysis of these factors through a new lens. First, the study was undertaken in a market context following a crisis that has had far-reaching consequences for customers’ relational behaviors. We explore the case of the Spanish banking industry, a sector that accurately reflects these new relational conditions, including a rising demand for more socially responsible banking. Second, we propose a holistic model that combines the effects of four key factors associated with service quality (outcome, personnel, servicescape and social qualities). We also apply an innovative predictive methodological technique using partial least squares (PLS) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) that enables us not only to determine the direct causal effects among variables, but also to consider different scenarios in which to predict customer loyalty. The results highlight the role of outcome and social qualities. The novelty of the social qualities factor helps to underscore the importance of social, ethical and sustainable practices to customer loyalty, although personnel and servicescape qualities must also be present to improve the predictive capability of service quality on loyalty

Service quality in alcohol treatment: a research note

Purpose - To evaluate service quality in a UK privately funded alcohol treatment clinic. Methodology - Data were gathered via interviews with two groups of participants using the SERVQUAL questionnaire. The first group comprised 32 patients and the second 15 clinic staff. The SERVQUAL instrument measures service quality expectations and perceptions across five service dimensions and identifies gaps between service expectations and perceptions of what was delivered. Findings – Patients’ service quality expectations were exceeded on four of five dimensions. However, staff members felt services fell below expectations on four of five dimensions with the ‘reliability’ service dimension emerging as the common service element falling below expectations for both participant groups. It was concluded that achieving consistent service delivery and increasing empathy between staff and patients improves overall service quality perceptions. Research limitations - Relies on self-report methods from a relatively small number of individuals. Originality - There have been limited research studies measuring alcohol treatment service quality in the private sector

Identifying reverse 3PL performance critical success factors

The reverse and third party logistics operational process is now well known and established to be a vital component of modern day supply chain and product / service-based organizations (Marasco, 2007). Apart from being a vital component of such enterprises, many researchers and practitioners have also been noting the importance of this approach and its impact on customer service, satisfaction, profitability and other key performance indicators (Autry et al., 2001). However, studies relating to reverse 3PL performance are still limited. This research attempts to examine the factors that influence the reverse logistics performance within 3PL, within a specific case study organization in Thailand, which aims to add to work carried out relating to such operations in this part of the world such as by Bhatnagar et al. (1999). This research uses a combination of a qualitative case study along with a quantitative approach (Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping) to model and analyse the constructs which underpin the dynamics involved within a 3PL scenario. As such, both the combined approaches are based upon the development and testing of a hypothesis via empirical primary and computational data. Hence, using extant literature, and combined qualitative and quantitative research approaches, the paper identifies significant and pertinent critical success factors for reverse 3PL performance (centred around the indogenous/exogenous relationship between information systems, resource commitment and organizational structure). The paper also explores the deep inter-relationships involved within 3PL operations using the Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping technique, contributing to the existing literature on reverse 3PL and performant supply chains, and identifying critical success factors and underlying determinants of reverse 3PL of use to those industry and investigating the area from an academic perspective

Evaluation of service quality by using fuzzy MCDM: A case study in Iranian health-care centers

Service quality plays an important role in health care systems since hospitals are responsible for people's lives. This study presents an effective approach for evaluating and comparing service qualities of four hospitals. Service quality consists of different attributes and many of them are intangible and difficult to measure. Therefore, we propose a fuzzy method to resolve the ambiguity of the concepts, which are associated with human judgments. SERVQUAL model is used to evaluate the respondents' judgments of service quality and multi attribute decision making approach is implemented for the comparison among hospitals. The paper use analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for obtaining criteria weight and TOPSIS for ranking the cases