Service quality evaluation and ranking of container terminal operators through hybrid multi-criteria decision making methods

Abstract

In today's competitive business environment, evaluation and analysis of service quality of service organizations is vital to further improve quality of providing service by the organizations. The present study focuses on the evaluation of service quality of container terminal operators as these organizations play a major role in increase of national economy. Service quality evaluation process makes use of SERVQUAL tool for service quality evaluation of container terminal operators. Customized questionnaire for 20 enablers of 5 dimensions of service quality are prepared and distributed to 25 customers of 12 container terminal operators in India. Weights of dimensions and enablers pertaining to service quality of container terminal operators are determined through Attribute Hierarchy Model (AHM) to avoid consistency check, present in standard AHP method. TOPSIS and GRP methods are implemented to evaluate service quality of container terminal operators and composite rank is arrived. Consistency in the ranking is observed in the ranking patterns obtained by the proposed methods.