Development of Hajqual: a marketing research tool to measure Hajj service quality

Abstract

Despite the religious and economic importance of Hajj, little attention has been paid to Hajj service quality. This paper develops HAJQUAL, an instrument for measuring service quality based on SERVQUAL. A preliminary questionnaire was administered to ten pilgrims to get their input and make possible adjustments. This led to an instrument containing 44 items. These items consisted of five dimensions of SERVQUAL in addition to the dimension of accessibility. This questionnaire was administered in UAE using Arabic and English versions. The researcher made initial contacts with fifty pilgrims, at the departure terminal in Jeddah, and assessed their willingness to participate in this study. These pilgrims were all enthusiastic about this study. The questionnaire was later sent to them via fax and e-mail. The questionnaire was also distributed to one hundred and thirty students who were requested to distribute it to members of their families who embarked on Hajj. One hundred and ten responses were received. Reliability analysis was conducted on the six original dimensions. Reliability coefficients were all found to be higher than 0.7. To assess the dimensionality of the instrument, all forty-four items were factor analysed. This exercise resulted in seven dimensions, which were checked for reliability and predictive validity.