Evaluating customer satisfaction by Common Component and Specific Weight Analysis

The Servqual model (Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988) involves a set of five dimensions ranked as the most important for service quality: Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy. The researchers developed then a survey instrument to measure the gaps between customers' expectations and perceptions of service. To jointly analyze these evaluations, Amenta and Simonetti (2006) proposed an approach based on the simultaneous diagonalization. An extension is here suggested and applied to expectations, perceptions and gap: the Common Components and Specific Weights Analysis (Qannari et al., 2001). The rationale behind this method is the existence of a common structure to the data tables. Therefore, it determines a common space of representation for all data. Each table (Servqual dimension) is allowed having a specific weight associated with each dimension of the common space.