Service Selection Based on Customer Rating of Quality of Service Attributes

Selecting the optimal service from a set of functionally equivalent services is non-trivial. Previous research has addressed this issue making use of Quality of Service (QoS) attributes of the candidate services. In doing this, researchers have however assumed that the customers´ preference of the various QoS attributes varies linearly with the actual attribute values. In this work, we put forward a technique that overcomes this restriction and compares functionally equivalent services on the basis of the customers´ perception of the QoS attributes rather than the actual attribute values. We utilize the ´mid-level splitting´ method to track the customer´s preference vis-a-vis the actual attribute values. Further, we utilize the ´Hypothetical Equivalents and In equivalents Method´ to assign weights, reflecting the importance, to the attributes on the basis of the customer preference. The whole procedure is demonstrated using a simple running example.