Multivariate approach for comparative evaluations of customer satisfaction with application to transport services

In problems related to evaluations of products or services (e.g. in customer satisfaction analysis) the main difficulties concern the synthesis of the information, which is necessary for the presence of several evaluators and many response variables (aspects under evaluation). In this paper the problem of determining and comparing the satisfaction of different groups of customers, in the presence of multivariate response variables and using the results of pairwise comparisons is addressed. Within the framework of group ranking methods and multicriteria decision making theory, a new approach, based on nonparametric techniques, for evaluating group satisfaction in a multivariate framework is proposed and the concept of Multivariate Relative Satisfaction is defined. An application to the evaluation of public transport services, like the railways service and the urban bus service, by students of the University of Ferrara (Italy) is also discussed.