Analysis of the Determinants of Quality in the Car-sharing Sector

A recent trend in the automotive industry is related to the switch of more and more customers towards vehicles’ rental, rather than ownership. According to this, the car-sharing sector is rapidly expanding, favoured also by the circular economy wave, as well as by complementary factors (wide internet access, advanced level of IT, good customer acceptance). Car-sharing can be classified as a product-service system (PSS), i.e., a bundle of a product (in this case the car) and a service (the rental). To assess the quality of a PSS no standard methodologies are diffused. Recent studies apply Topic Modelling algorithms to the users’ reviews to grasp the quality determinants, represented by the discussion topics. However, understanding how these affect the overall customers’ perception requires further investigations. In this study we use the factor analysis method to group the topics extracted from a database of reviews (downloaded using web-scraper tools). Through this approach we aim at detecting general determinants of quality that are independent from the specific service considered. In order to categorize the relations between these determinants and the customers’ satisfaction a Kano-like framework is used. This framework associates the distributions of rankings within topics (or determinants) to Kano categories and then prioritize them. Determinants linked to the rental process and the documentation and fees are identified as the most critical for users, while determinants linked to support activities (software and customer services) seem to have a lower impact on the overall quality. These criticalities do not vary significantly when the analysis is focused on a specific sharing scheme (free-floating or station based) and are equally not influenced by the geographical market considered. The last part of the study is dedicated to the benchmarking of the competitors considered with respect to the quality of the service offered (according to the determinants identified). Some providers are, in general, associated with a higher quality perception, due to better performances in all the determinants. However, when focusing only on a specific scheme (or market) the rankings are different.