Application of the european customer satisfaction index to postal services. Structural equation models versus partial least squars

Customer satisfaction and retention are key issues for organizations in today’s competitive market place. As such, much research and revenue has been invested in developing accurate ways of assessing consumer satisfaction at both the macro (national) and micro (organizational) level, facilitating comparisons in performance both within and between industries. Since the instigation of the national customer satisfaction indices (CSI), partial least squares (PLS) has been used to estimate the CSI models in preference to structural equation models (SEM) because they do not rely on strict assumptions about the data. However, this choice was based upon some misconceptions about the use of SEM’s and does not take into consideration more recent advances in SEM, including estimation methods that are robust to non-normality and missing data. In this paper, both SEM and PLS approaches were compared by evaluating perceptions of the Isle of Man Post Office Products and Customer service using a CSI format. The new robust SEM procedures were found to be advantageous over PLS. Product quality was found to be the only driver of customer satisfaction, while image and satisfaction were the only predictors of loyalty, thus arguing for the specificity of postal services

Group preference structures in AHP–group decision making

This paper presents a procedure that allows us to determine the preference structures (PS) associated to each of the different groups of actors that can be identified in a group decision making problem with a large number of individuals. To that end, it makes use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) (Saaty, 1980) as the technique to solve discrete multicriteria decision making problems. This technique permits the resolution of multicriteria, multienvironment and multiactor problems in which subjective aspects and uncertainty have been incorporated into the model, constructing ratio scales corresponding to the priorities relative to the elements being compared, normalised in a distributive manner (wi = 1). On the basis of the individuals’ priorities we identify different clusters for the decision makers and, for each of these, the associated preference structure using, to that end, tools analogous to those of Multidimensional Scaling. The resulting PS will be employed to extract knowledge for the subsequent negotiation processes and, should it be necessary, to determine the relative importance of the alternatives being compared using anyone of the existing procedures

Customer satisfaction in the banking industry: a comparative study of Ghana and Spain

La satisfacció és una preocupació crucial pels clients i per les organitzacions, incloent els bancs. L'estudi examina la satisfacció global dels clients dels bancs a Ghana i Espanya. Així s'analitzen aspectes com la relació entre satisfacció global i les dimensions de qualitat dels serveis bancari, així com les pròpies dimensions principals de la qualitat d'aquests serveis. Finalment, les percepcions sobre aquestes dimensions son comparades entre els bancs de Ghana i Espanya. S'han analitzat els clients de 819 bancs de Ghana i Espanya, els resultats van mostrar que els clients espanyols estaven més descontents respecte les dimensions tangibles i empatia metre que els clients de Ghana puntuaven pitjar la dimensió conveniència. En general, els clients de Ghana estaven força més descontents amb els serveis bancaris que els d'Espanya. La fiabilitat, l'empatia i la conveniència son els predictors de satisfacció global en Ghana, mentres que la fiabilitat és la única dimensió que explica la satisfacció global a Espanya.