The customer satisfaction evaluation of mobile industry based on multilevel structural equation model

Abstract

Regarding the multilevel structure of customer satisfaction (CS) measurement index in mobile industry, which ordinary structural equation model (SEM) cannot deal with directly, in this paper we propose multilevel structural equation model (MSEM) in which some observed variables have secondary observed variables. Then we apply the partial least squares (PLS) to estimate parameters of the model. Finally the MSEM and PLS given in this paper are used to evaluate the CS in mobile industry. We measure CS degree of this industry, and find some important factors which affect CS remarkably. Our research results also support some CS theory. The empirical analysis shows that MSEM is reasonable and effective to solve the multilevel structure problem. ©2009 IEEE.