What is the impact of service quality on customers' satisfaction during COVID-19 outbreak? New findings from online reviews analysis

Mehrbakhsh Nilashi; Rabab Ali Abumalloh; Abdullah Alghamdi; Behrouz Minaei-Bidgoli; Abdulaziz A Alsulami; Mohammed Thanoon; Shahla Asadi; Sarminah Samad

doi:10.1016/j.tele.2021.101693

What is the impact of service quality on customers' satisfaction during COVID-19 outbreak? New findings from online reviews analysis

Telemat Inform. 2021 Nov:64:101693. doi: 10.1016/j.tele.2021.101693. Epub 2021 Aug 3.

Authors

Mehrbakhsh Nilashi^{1

2}, Rabab Ali Abumalloh³, Abdullah Alghamdi⁴, Behrouz Minaei-Bidgoli², Abdulaziz A Alsulami⁵, Mohammed Thanoon⁶, Shahla Asadi⁷, Sarminah Samad⁸

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Global Sustainability Studies (CGSS), Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 USM Penang, Malaysia.
² School of Computer Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Iran.
³ Computer Department, Community College, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, P.O. Box. 1982, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Information Systems Dept., College of Computer Science and Information Systems, Najran University, Najran, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ Information Technology Dept., College of Computers at Al-Lith, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia.
⁷ Centre of Software Technology and Management, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
⁸ Department of Business Administration, College of Business and Administration, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major global changes both in the areas of healthcare and economics. This pandemic has led, mainly due to conditions related to confinement, to major changes in consumer habits and behaviors. Although there have been several studies on the analysis of customers' satisfaction through survey-based and online customers' reviews, the impact of COVID-19 on customers' satisfaction has not been investigated so far. It is important to investigate dimensions of satisfaction from the online customers' reviews to reveal their preferences on the hotels' services during the COVID-19 outbreak. This study aims to reveal the travelers' satisfaction in Malaysian hotels during the COVID-19 outbreak through online customers' reviews. In addition, this study investigates whether service quality during COVID-19 has an impact on hotel performance criteria and consequently customers' satisfaction. Accordingly, we develop a new method through machine learning approaches. The method is developed using text mining, clustering, and prediction learning techniques. We use Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for big data analysis to identify the voice-of-the-customer, Expectation-Maximization (EM) for clustering, and ANFIS for satisfaction level prediction. In addition, we use Higher-Order Singular Value Decomposition (HOSVD) for missing value imputation. The data was collected from TripAdvisor regarding the travelers' concerns in the form of online reviews on the COVID-19 outbreak and numerical ratings on hotel services from different perspectives. The results from the analysis of online customers' reviews revealed that service quality during COVID-19 has an impact on hotel performance criteria and consequently customers' satisfaction. In addition, the results showed that although the customers are always seeking hotels with better performance, they are also concerned with the quality of related services in the COVID-19 outbreak.

Keywords: COVID-19 outbreak; Customers' satisfaction; Hotels; Machine learning; Online customers’ reviews.