Strategic analysis of transit service quality using fuzzy AHP methodology

Customer satisfaction analyses are deeply based on customers' judgments and as consequence, they can be characterized by a certain degree of uncertainty generally ascribed to coexistence of three relevant aspects: vagueness, imprecision and subjectivity. In the present paper, a methodology able to handle such uncertainty, based on the ServQual discrepancy paradigm and that uses in combined manner the AHP method and the Fuzzy Sets Theory is proposed in order to overcome limitations of the traditional service evaluation approaches. Subsequently, by considering the Italian public transit service sector, a service quality analysis is conducted and the overall transit service quality structure is described. Finally, by using the developed methodology, the evaluation of customer satisfaction for the public urban transit service provided in the city of Palermo (Italy) is performed, and the prioritizing of its critical to quality service attributes is carried out. The obtained results show that only few service attributes play an important role in performing a quality transit service.