Question

Topic: Research/Metrics

Servqual Customer Satisfaction Survey

Posted by Anonymous on 4/19/2010 at 2:28 PM ET 250 Points
Hi everyone,

With customer satisfaction research on basis of the SERVQUAL method, there are 5 categories with multiple items within each category. Then you can ask for each item, customers' satisfaction with that item and how important they consider that item. The results can then be visualized in an importance-satisfaction matrix. So far, so good.

But next you sometimes see researchers asking an additional question that asks the respondent to divide a 100 points over the 5 categories on the basis of how important that category is to the respondent. My question is what the role is of this question? After all, you already have asked for the importance at the item-level? If you want to know the importance of a category, it seems to me more reliable to look at the average importance-scores on the items within that category (after all, these are more concrete than the abstract descriptions of the categories)?

Am wondering if anyone knows what the function of the additional question is.

Regards,
Nick
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by koen.h.pauwels on 4/19/2010 at 2:57 PM Accepted
    Hi Nick,

    That question indeed offers a reliability check on the importance rating of the previous 5 items. Basically, it guards against the tendency of some respondents to rate every item as extremely important: by asking to divide 100 points, you are forcing customers to make trade-offs, which they did not need to do when they rated each item seperately.

    Yes, a respondent who has thought very carefully about the importance rating of every item, will come up with a consistent point division in the last question. But how many respondents behave that way?
  • Posted by mgoodman on 4/19/2010 at 3:58 PM Moderator
    I've utilized both the rating and the point-distribution approaches. Koen is exactly right (as usual). When you have a large enough base size, the rank order of the individual items is usually the same regardless of which method is used. The difference is that the point-distribution approach forces more discrimination, so the spread between the options is often greater. People tend to rate things pretty much the same when they are not forced to make choices.

    For example, on a 5 point rating scale, a popular item will typically get rated 4 or 5. In fact, many times a lot of items are rated 4 or 5, and it's almost impossible to discern any difference between them when you look at the average rating. When you have a fixed number of points to allocate, you can't give everything a 4 or a 5, so you're forced to be more discriminating.

    The drawback to the point-allocation method is that it prevents you from rating everything highly if you really feel everything is important. It can force a preference where none really exists.
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