Evaluating Online Shopping Service Quality—SERVEGAL in Taiwan Tourism Industry

Meiling Wong

doi:10.4236/jss.2014.29036

Abstract

While SERVQUAL is the most extensively used measurements of service quality among industries nowadays and its five-dimension measured factors are investigated with respect to the customers’ reaction, E-SERVQUAL thus is developed amid traditional service industries to cope with the internet markets. Both two models use measured data based upon after purchased instead of pre- purchased which is considered as the main concern for service quality. Taking Magal’s instrument into account, which indicates three dimensions that possess the function of customers’ comments, customers’ demand and service planning to measure the service quality, we propose the SERVEGAL model to include customers’ recognition on service quality pre-purchasing. And a case study in tourism industry is applied to verify our proposal. The result of this study shows that SERVEGAL is not merely a service planning provider, but also a tool to accommodate with the customers’ expectation for service quality.

Highlights

In the field of marketing, the construct of perceived value has been identified as one of the most important measures for gaining competitive edge [1], and has been argued to be the most important indicator of repurchase intentions [2]
In order to minimize the gap of the perceived service quality between the service provider and receiver, the customer’s demand of travel needed to collected and considered into customization before purchase
This study proposes SERVEGAL that combines SERVEQUAL and the forecasting dimension of MAGAL not just evaluates the service quality prior to transaction and provides the customer’s expectation for the service provider to consider into the delivery of the service

Summary

Introduction

In the field of marketing, the construct of perceived value has been identified as one of the most important measures for gaining competitive edge [1], and has been argued to be the most important indicator of repurchase intentions [2]. While repurchase intentions and consumer loyalty are often predicted solely by measures of consumer satisfaction, and/or service quality [4] [5], Imrie et al [6] argued that the fundamental role that culture and/or personal values perform through informing consumer evaluation and choice behavior was not considered in the SERVQUAL model [7] when they conducted a field research within Taiwan to ascertain whether the dominant service quality model holds in the “foreign” environment [6] In their findings, three major themes of sincerity; generosity; and courtesy/politeness were grouped under an umbrella dimension to reflect the supposed impact of Confusion values upon the choice of evaluative criteria, and a richer conceptualization was required to capture issues relating to the central role of personal relationships within the service encounter. Doing business in China is literally an art of dealing with the interpersonal relationships [11]-[15]

Guanxi and SERVQUAL

SERVEGAL

Conclusion and Perspectives