Developing and Validating a Multi-Criteria Model to Evaluate Mobile Service Quality

Even though electronic service (e-service) quality has been analyzed to a great extent, mobile service (m-service) quality still requires further investigation. The hierarchical and multi-criteria structure, which is adopted in this work, appears to be the most appropriate approach to define m-service quality. In the proposed theoretical framework, m-service quality is composed of three primary dimensions: (1) interaction, (2) environment, and (3) outcome quality. An overall view of m-service quality would propose interaction quality to include the sub-dimensions of expertise, problem solving, information, security/privacy, and customization/personalization, environment quality to comprise equipment, design, and context, and outcome quality to be composed of reliability, tangibles, and valence. In order to validate the proposed theoretical framework, each sub-dimension is further analyzed into a number of quality criteria by means of a number of experts. Following this method, the quality criteria are assessed through a survey conducted with a sample of mobile users. Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), it is proved that the quality criteria were properly grouped into the sub-dimensions of the proposed theoretical framework. These findings entail that the sub-dimensions described in this paper are in fact the constituent parts of the m-service quality construct.

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