Abstract
The main aim of this paper is to analyze the correlation of service quality gaps and to estimate customerdissatisfaction based on those gaps in the Iran Travel Agency (ITA) as one of the international travel agencies ofthe country. For this purpose, a questionnaire has been designed based on the SERVQUAL approach(perceptions and expectations), which includes five major categories of service quality dimensions and aresubdivided into 15 dimensions and an additional question for measuring the overall dissatisfaction. 30 regularcustomers of the agency have been asked to fill the questionnaires. The correlation of service quality gaps andthen the relationship between overall customer dissatisfaction and major service quality gaps are determined bycorrelation and regression analysis. The findings imply that the maximum value of gap is related to 'appealingaccommodation facilities', which is a part of the dimension of tangibles. The minimum values of the gaps arealso related to 'on time delivery' and 'reputation of service. The correlation analysis has not addressed anysignificant correlation among the gaps. Ultimately, regression analysis has approved and estimated linearcorrelation between the gaps of empathy and tangibles and the overall customer dissatisfaction.
Highlights
In today’s turbulent market environment, many businesses are facing increasing competition and they have to increase the quality of their products and services
A generic instrument was defined by Parasuraman et al (1991) to measure the quality of services. They emphasized that the purpose of SERVQUAL is to serve as a diagnostic methodology for uncovering broad areas of a company’s service quality shortfalls and strengths
The purpose is to i) study, measure and analyze the associated gaps based on the SERVQUAL scale; and ii) to estimate the linear relationship between overall customer dissatisfaction and the gaps
Summary
In today’s turbulent market environment, many businesses are facing increasing competition and they have to increase the quality of their products and services. In some businesses such as travel, tourism, catering and banking the delivery of high quality services to consumers is increasingly recognized as a key factor affecting the performance of the firm (Atilgan et al, 2003). A generic instrument was defined by Parasuraman et al (1991) to measure the quality of services. Parasuraman et al (1985) concluded that SERVQUAL instrument evaluates service quality by comparing expectations with perceptions on five dimensions of tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. SERVQUAL has been used to measure service quality in a variety of service industries including healthcare (Carman, 1990; Kilbourne et al, 2004; Silvestro, 2005); banking (Mels et al, 1997; Lam, 1997; Zhou et al, 2002); fast food (Lee and Ulgado, 1997); telecommunications (van der Wal et al, 2002); retail chains (Parasuraman et al, 1994); information systems (Jiang et al, 2000); and web sites (van Iwaarden et al, 2003)
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