An EFQM-Based Self-Assessment Method for Railway Transportation Service Quality: An Application with Intuitionistic Fuzzy AHP

Abstract

Service quality is one of the most important issues in railway transportation because it is a concept that positively affects customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, corporate image, and intention to repurchase. The European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model provides an opportunity to facilitate the service quality-focused self-assessment efforts of the railway companies. This is the first study that integrates intuitionistic fuzzy theory in the application of the EFQM Model of railway industry in Turkey. As the main contribution, it is aimed to find a dedicatedly special weighting schema for the application of EFQM model in railway transportation. For this purpose, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is utilized with an integration of intuitionistic fuzzy sets that can reveal the decision-makers’ opinions, preferences, and expertise more comprehensively than traditional fuzzy sets can do. Consequently, it is found that the original model should be modified for the railway industry since the weights of all the criteria included in the model are found different than the original ones. The study provides new insights into the long-term benefits of applying the EFQM model as a framework in railway transportation and understanding the associations between the EFQM criteria and railway transportation.