Essay On Service Quality

Service quality is referred to a valuation of how good a delivered service meets the customer’s expectation. Upper management

Source : Adapted from A. Parasuraman, Valerie Zeithaml, and Leonard Berry, “A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research,” Journal of Marketing, 49 (Fall 1985)

Customer satisfaction and service quality are the two important components that direct anyone’s attention in every concept related to marketing, services, etc. (Spreng and Mackoy, 2006). In today’s competitive era, the success lies in

SERVQUAL is a model used to measure service quality management in relation to customer service quality needs. It analyzes the gap between the two. In measuring service quality, SERVQUAL has been proved to be the most popularly used instrument in the past one decade. Oftenly, it is used to measure service quality of a service providing organizations to compare the expectations of customers beforehand and their perception in regard to the services being offered (Shahin, 2010). The model can be employed to assess the quality of services provided by any service organization, it being universal. Services are economic activities, they provide benefits, and create value for clients. As such, there is a need for measurement of their quality at specific points due to the desire for change, or on behalf of the customers that receive the services (Shahin, 2010).

Obviously, from a Best Value point of view the measuring of service quality in the service segment ought to consider client desires of service and also impression of service. Be that as it may, as Robinson (1999) postulated that: "It is clear that there is little agreement of supposition and much contradiction about how to gauge service quality". One service quality estimation show that has been widely used is the SERVQUAL model created by Parasuraman et al . (1985, 1986, 1988, 1991, 1993, 1994; Zeithaml et al. , 1990). SERVQUAL as the frequently utilized tool for measuring service quality has been to look at clients ' desires before an service experience and their impression of the real service conveyed

Today, customers appear to be more demanding for a high standard quality of products and services, in particular desiring for quick response. Customer’s needs and expectation is therefore considered as an important issue for a company to meet the requirements of the customer. Customer dissatisfaction gives rise to a wide range of problems to a business. In view of that, the key challenge of a company is to continuously improve the quality of products and services.

Generally speaking, the perceived service quality is a subjective term that captures the overall superiority of a product comparing with other products that satisfy the similar needs (Holbrook & Corfman, 1985). Sometimes, service quality interchanges with overall attitude whose definition is “a learned predisposition to respond to an object in a consistently favorable or unfavorable way” (Allport, 1935), and they are perceived as two similar terms to some researchers (Bitner, 1990; Zeithaml et al., 1988). Actually, either definition captures the subjective element in service quality. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, some researchers argued that perceived service quality is based on the expectations and the actual service delivery (Boulding, Kalra, Staelin, & Zeithaml, 1993; Parasuraman et al., 1985), similar to the gap model in the customer satisfaction area (Olive, 1980). Specifically, expectations are customers’ subjective beliefs of the likely outcomes that a service provides (Oliver & Winer, 1987) while the actual service delivery is the objective factors that a service really provides (Boulding et al., 1993). The subjective nature of expectation and the subjective process in evaluating actual service delivery determine that service quality is a subjective term. Therefore, because of the heterogeneity (Edgett and Parkinson, 1993; Zeithaml et al., 1985), perceive service quality is difficult to improve with traditional quality control in service industry. In this

According to ( Butcher ,2005 , and Hellier et al., 2003) defined repurchase intention as ‘the individual’s judgment about buying again a designated service from the same company, taking into accounts his or her current situation and likely circumstances’, and also regarded as a sound service outcome that is measurable, and intentions-as-expectations.

Satisfaction is an evaluation of finite duration, made by the customer on product performance of the same, be it a good or service (Oliver, 1980). This review, according to the author, it tends to turn into a positive attitude (or not) by the consumer. Tse and Wilton (1988), defined as consumer response to the evaluation of the discrepancy between the previous and current performance expectations of a product as perceived after consumption. Oliver (1980) and Selnes (1998) argue that this is an essential variable to the continuity of a relationship and for future customer retention.

Later, Parasuraman et al. (1988) revised their earlier conceptual model and conceptualized perceived service quality as “a global judgment, or attitude, relating to the superiority of the service” and also developed a 22-items instrument, recognized as SERVQUAL, which has become widely used as a generic instrument for measuring service quality. The instrument items represent five dimensions: reliability, responsiveness, tangibles, assurance and empathy. The conceptual model of Parasuraman et al. (1988) can serve as a basis for understanding customer expectations and service performance. Lee et al. (2000) have made substantial contribution to the service quality literature. They used SERVQUAL model and identified determinants of perceived service quality. Furthermore, they tried to build a relationship of these service quality determinants with satisfaction in the service-oriented firm. They have found that perceived service quality is an antecedent of satisfaction. However, they did not pay attention to whether loyalty can be the final outcome of service quality and satisfaction.Further, researchers identified various service quality dimensions and these are used as independent variables in several service quality studies. For example; Flavian et al. (2004) identified factors like access to service, service offered, security, and reputation for measuring service quality. In this study, authors measured corporate image

In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers, customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element of business strategy.

Service quality is thought to be a critical measurement of competitiveness. Providing excellent service quality and high customer satisfaction is the vital issue and challenge facing the modern service industry. Service quality is an important subject in both the public and private sectors, in business and service industries (Zahari et al., 2008). It is the degree to which a service meets or exceeds customer needs and expectations that is important. During the past two decades, service quality has become a major area of consideration to practitioners, managers and researchers because of its strong influence on business performance, lower costs, and return on investment, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and gaining advanced profit (Ostrowski & O 'Brien, 1993).

Service quality represents a fundamental aspect of delivery, which strongly influences consumer satisfaction and, as a result, loyalty. In today’s global market a customer’s service expectation has to be met and exceeded eventually in order to retain customers as well as achieve success. Perceived quality of a product or a service is becoming one of the major competitive factors in the business world and has led to the innovation of the ‘Quality Era’ (Peeler, 1996). In simple words, the comparison of customer expectations with service performance is service quality. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is defined as a pleasurable fulfilment response toward a good, service, benefit, or reward (Oliver, 1997). Both of these

Service Quality is the comparison of a customer to a service by a person/company between the perception of what a service and the expectations of a customer. Different customers have different perceptions on what a good service and what a bad service. It is up to the company to satisfy every ones needs and expectations to have happy and contented customers (Oliver, 1997).

This report is the outcome of a research created with the purpose of determining what impacts on customers’ satisfaction and expectation of service, as well as to study the relationship between the service nature, service quality, service failure, service recovery strategies and service guarantee. Evidence of how effective the service quality measurement models, such as SERVQUAL and SERVPREF, is also shown. The focus of this research is to show the main components of services, how