Qualitative analysis of big data in the service sectors

Nowadays, service sectors are facing a data tsunami. Previous studies on service sectors have been conducted using questionnaire surveys and have been subjectively analyzed using statistical analysis techniques. Such techniques make it difficult for non-statisticians to integrally explore the overall nature of questionnaire data in the big data paradigm. To further discover the quantitative and qualitative nature of a data set, granularity computing is used to make up for the weaknesses of statistical techniques and a rough set (RS) based solution approach is proposed. The Multi-Value Rule Generation (MVRG) algorithm is developed to analyze questionnaire data and deal with the roughness problem of multiple-values in outcome features. The rules resulting from the MVRG algorithm exhibit both the relationships between dependent and independent variables and the content of the relationships. Rules, rather than numerical charts, can be understood by non-statisticians. Two cases of tourism and hospitality are restudied and comparisons between the proposed approach and traditional analytical techniques are made to validate the complementary benefits of traditional statistical analysis. This comparison shows that the proposed solution approach provides further hidden knowledge behind the data set. The MVRG algorithm can complement statistical methods in finding hidden knowledge and providing comprehensive rules to non-statisticians.