School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China 2 China Certification & Inspection Company, Beijing, China ■2012 JSPS Asian CORE Program, Nagoya Univ
Trang 1School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
2
China Certification & Inspection Company, Beijing, China
■2012 JSPS Asian CORE Program, Nagoya University and VNU University of Economics and Business
Certification & Inspection Service Quality:
Applying the fuzzy SERVQUAL method
CUI Li-xin 1, ZENG Guang-feng 2, WU Hong-yan2, WANG Cheng-jie 2, LIU Ru 1
ABSTRACT:This paper applied fuzzy set theory based on modified SERVQUAL model to analysis service quality in
certification & inspection industry in China The study consists of 405 randomly selected participants who are customers
of China Certification & Inspection Group (CCIC) The paper includes four parts: introduction, methodology, a case
study of certification & inspection service quality and conclusions The results of this research show that among the five
dimensions the feature of “tangible” has the biggest gap between the service quality expectations and perceptions So, the
company we studied (CCIC) need to increase investment in tangible aspects in order to improve their service quality
efficiently
KEYWORDS: SERVQUAL certification & inspection fuzzy set theory
1 Introduction
Service quality is more difficult to be evaluated
than commodity quality but it plays an especially
important role in firms to improve customer
satisfaction and customer loyalty For measuring the
service quality, a 22-item questionnaire instrument
called SERVQUAL was proposed by Parasuraman et
al in 1988 (A Parasuraman, V A Zeithaml, L L
Berry, 1988) Since then, the SERVQUAL
questionnaire has been used to analyze service quality
within diverse organizations, such as retailing
organizations(Halil Nadiri, 2011), airline
industry(James J H Liou et al., 2011),
restaurants(Jang-Hyeon Nam et al.,2011), hotel(Prabha
Ramseook-Munhurrun, Perunjodi Naidoo, 2010; Ivana
Blesic et al., 2011), higher education(Ishfaq Ahmed et al., 2010; Kashif Hussain, 2011), urban transportation(Seyed Mohammad Mahmoudi et al., 2010; Anjali Awasthi et al., 2011), public or private health care(Raymond Tempier et al., 2010; Tashonna R
Webster et al., 2011), information system(Narasimhaiah Gorla, 2011), e-learning(Godwin
J Udo et al.,2011), hot spring industry(Shun-Hsing
management(Yao-Chen Kuo et al., 2011), internet service(Godwin J Udo et al., 2010;Gregory John Lee, 2011), supply chain(Gyan Prakash, 2011), banking(Mina Beigi, Melika Shirmohammadi, 2011), and so on But the measurement of SERVQUAL hasn't been applied to certification & inspection
Trang 2industry so far Qin Su et al (2010) just mentioned that
SERVQUAL maybe not suitable for certification
industry and in their research they applied Indserv
model which is a measurement designed specifically
for BtoB industry
In previous researches, methods being used are
various, including fuzzy set theory (Chien-Chang Chou,
2008), Structural Equation Modeling (Lin Deng-Juin et
al., 2009), fuzzy AHP (Chen Guiyun et al., 2006),
grey-fuzzy DEMATEL approach (Tseng Ming-Lang,
2009), modified grey relation method (James J H
Liou et al., 2011) and so on
This paper applied fuzzy set theory based on
modified SERVQUAL model to analysis service
quality in certification & inspection industry in China
2 Methodology
The fuzzy set theory used in this paper was
introduced by Zadeh (1965) firstly In fact, fuzzy set
theory has been applied in solving many
decision-making problems In this paper, a combined
fuzzy SERVQUAL method will be used to copy with
the measurement of service quality in certification &
inspection industry In this section, the basic definitions
of fuzzy set theory are briefly presented as follows:
2.1 The concept of fuzzy number
Because of the simplicity of the concept and
computation for triangular fuzzy number set, it is
widely used in practical applications (Pedrycz, 1994)
Suppose A a , b , c is a triangular fuzzy number
as Fig 1 Then, suppose the membership function of
A isfA x
0
A
b a
c b
else
b x a a b
a x x
c x b b c
x c x
1 0
1
h h a b a h
1 0
1
h h a c a h
x
LA and RA x are the left function and right function of the triangular fuzzy number A,
respectively While LA1 h and RA1 h are the inverse functions of the function LA x and the function RA x , respectively
The graded mean integration representation method for one fuzzy number is proposed by Chen and Hsieh(1998) This method is based on the integral
value of graded mean h-level of fuzzy number In detail, suppose the graded mean h-level value of fuzzy
number A is h LA1 h RA1 h / 2(the graded mean
h-level value of fuzzy number A as Fig 2.)
Fig 1 Triangular fuzzy number A
A
A
R
A
L
Trang 3The graded mean integration representation of A
is P A
2
2 1
4 6
（ 1 ）
2.2 The arithmetic operations on fuzzy numbers
Based on fuzzy set theory, the basic arithmetic
operations of fuzzy numbers have been clearly
described Suppose A1 a1， b1， c1 is a
2 2
2
A ， ， is another triangular fuzzy
number We present the basic arithmetic operations of
fuzzy numbers as follow
(1)Addition of fuzzy numbers
2 1 2 1 2 1 2
(2)Subtraction of fuzzy numbers
2 1 2 1 2 1 2
3 A case study of certification & inspection service
quality
During the research of the measurement of service quality in the certification & inspection industry, there are 3 steps involved They are questionnaire designing, interview survey, calculation for collecting data 3.1 Questionnaire design
In this research, the questionnaire designing is based on the previous literatures and the interview of the interviewees came from China Certification & Inspection Group (CCIC) In the questionnaire, there are
5 major dimensions and 22 items
3.2 Interview survey All the interviewees are the customs of CCIC who have already accepted the service provided by CCIC Participants are randomly selected The survey spent about 3 weeks The size of the sample is 405 The response rate is nearly 100%
3.3 Calculation for collecting data The scores of expectations and perceptions for service quality are calculated, respectively The result
of the scores of expectations and perceptions, and the gap between expectation and perception are shown in Table 1 and Table 2
4 Conclusions and suggestions The fuzzy SERVQUAL method is a combination
of SERVQUAL model and fuzzy set theory The gaps between the expectations and the perceptions of the service quality can measure a company’s service quality level From the study, we can come to the conclusion that CCIC doesn’t provide satisfactory service to customers There exist gaps between the expectations and the perceptions of all service quality dimensions We sort these gaps among different dimensions from high to low as following: tangible、 responsiveness、reliability、empathy、assurance The Company we studied (CCIC) should give the most priority of increasing investment in the visual image of the company in order to improve customers’ perception
of its services
Fig 2 The graded mean h-level value of
fuzzy number A
A
A
R
A
L
h
h
L A1
h
RA1
h
L A1
Trang 4Table 1 Scores of fuzzy perceptions and expectations
Responsiveness (6.139,8.134,8.883) (6.422,8.422,8.963) (-2.824,-0.288,2.46)
Assurance (6.239,8.246,8.983) (6.470,8.470,8.985) (-2.746,-0.223,2.513)
Reliability (6.224,8.219,8.924) (6.489,8.489,8.982) (-2.758,-0.271,2.435)
Tangibles (5.782,7.775,8.8) (6.308,8.308,8.949) (-3.166,-0.533,2.491)
Empathy (6.251,8.246,8.913) (6.494,8.494,8.989) (-2.738,-0.249,2.419)
22 (6.206,8.201,8.894) (6.475,8.4745,8.983) (-2.777,-0.274,2.42)
Trang 5Table 2 Scores of perceptions and expectations
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for
Asian CORE Program "Manufacturing and
Environmental Management in East Asia" of Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
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