Evaluating the Service Quality of Funeral Home Services using P-C-P Attributes Model

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop a service quality measurement scale for the funeral home service industry. Funeral home services play an important role in our society; however it did not receive much attention in academic research regarding how its service quality is able to improve. To fulfill this research purpose, it is crucial for funeral home managers and employees to have a good understanding on what exactly the customers want. In this paper, P-C-P model proposed by Philip and Hazlett (1997) is employed as the conceptual framework. Based on this conceptual framework, the specific expectations of customers in regards to funeral services were firstly surveyed. The critical factors and their relative weights of the service quality were then identified. The subjects participated in this study were recruited from Guatemala City who either had the experiences of using the funeral services or are now working in this industry. The results showed that total of 32 critical factors in six dimensions of funeral home services were identified, which include 10 critical factors in the pivot level, 12 critical factors in the core level, and 10 critical factors in the peripheral level. Also, the results were verified the level of appropriateness on the 32 chosen critical factors. The 32 critical factors had an average score of 81.28, which an 88 could be the highest possible score. Finally, based on the results the P-C-P model main propose is to show that the Pivotal factors have a higher relative weight and was further discussed in the following.