Concept Of Service Quality Research Articles

AN APPLICATION OF THE MULTIVARIATE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS TO SERVICE QUALITY MEASUREMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The conceptualization of service quality and the development of measurement tools and techniques aimed at assessing service quality and customer satisfaction levels within the education sector, have been a central theme of recent years. The research has examined the student expectations and perceptions of service quality in higher education for tourism and hospitality management, using a modified version of SERVQUAL instrument. Data were collected using a questionnaire in two parts. The first part is concerned with student perceptions of higher education institutions in general, while the second part is concerned with Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management Opatija in particular. The aim of the present research is the multivariate statistical analysis (factor analysis and reliability analysis) of a SERVQUAL scale adjusted for higher education service quality. The final section of this study is devoted to developing and proposing new directions for future higher education service quality measurement.

The service quality construct on a global stage

The eagerness of global marketers to establish a competitive advantage based upon service quality excellence within emerging markets displays a degree of naïveté in respect to the influence of environmental factors upon consumption behaviour. An example of this is the global application of Parasuraman, Zeithamal and Berry’s conceptualisation of service quality (SERVQUAL) in 1988 without consideration of the possible influence of the variety of cultures found in international markets. This paper takes a cautionary stance to such global application, and proposes that cultural values endow consumers with rules that guide their evaluation of service quality. Field research was conducted within Taiwan to ascertain whether the dominant service quality model holds in this “foreign” environment. The results indicate that not only do cultural values influence the hierarchy of service quality dimensions, but also that Parasuraman et al.’s SERVQUAL conceptual model does not capture the breadth of criteria utilised by Taiwanese consumers. Interpersonal relations are highlighted as a dimension of service quality that is not adequately addressed by SERVQUAL.

The perceived service quality concept – a mistake?

The perceived service quality concept – a mistake?

Measurement and Management Issues in Customer Satisfaction Research: Review, Critique and Research Agenda: Part One

Customer satisfaction research has become the most frequent application of market research in the 1990s. There are however a number of issues imposing difficulties on its measurement and manage ment. This two-part article provides a synthesis of various conceptual and practical issues that exist in the customer satisfaction assessment literature in order to identify where we stand today and create a sense of direction for future research. The issues to be discussed include: (1) What is customer satisfaction ? (2) Are customer satisfaction and service quality concepts distinguishable? (3) How one can and ought to measure customer satisfac tion? (4) Who determines satisfaction: the researcher or the customer? (5) Are customers' expectations for and assessment of hospitality and tourism services culture-driven? And finally (6) is measuring customer satisfaction an end in itself?

The perceived service quality concept – a mistake?

Compares traditional marketing models to service marketing models, stating that the most important characteristic of services is the fact that services are processes, not things. A service firm has no products, only interactive processes. Whereas the consumption of physical products can be described as “outcome consumption”, the consumption of services can be characterized as “process consumption”. In this context, describes the development of the perceived service quality concept.

Converging Services Marketing and Tourism Approaches in Satisfaction and Service Quality Research

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to converge the utilitarian or provider-based concept of service quality and the experiential or customer-based concept of satisfaction. It presents two empirical projects which examined visitor's service quality and satisfaction judgements by alternative methodological approaches. The first is a quantitative study of visitor's assessment of historic houses, illustrating that quality and satisfaction concepts can be successfully combined into a model of the means-end chain type. The second is a qualitative study of visitor's narrative assessment of successive service experiences, highlighting the various functions of service quality aspects during the entire holiday stay. Finally, the authors argue that these kinds of approaches may contribute to the academic debate on satisfaction and service quality constructs, and will equally open up new opportunities for service and destination marketers in tourism.

Rehumanising technology in healthcare delivery

For many consumers, interactions with health plans and providers are often unnecessarily dehumanising and dreadful events. Even when technical outcomes are satisfactory from the point of view of the clinician, high costs, long waits, and depersonalised technology and treatment can result in reduced satisfaction and compromised outcomes from the patient perspective. Drawing on a review of the literature and the authors' own research, this paper explores the concepts of service quality, service orientation, caring, and other patient-centred behaviours as practiced by healthcare professionals and demonstrated in healthcare systems. A summary of the impact of patient-centred care on outcomes will provide a basis for suggestions for clinicians and managers.

Rural tourism in Israel: service quality and orientation

Rural tourism in Israel is a growing trend, augmented by declining agricultural income. The concept of service quality and service orientation in rural tourism establishments (B&B's) in Israel is investigated. Utilizing Grönroos's model of perceived service quality, an exploratory empirical study of 206 guests and 23 entrepreneurs revealed gaps between expected and experienced service dimensions. Based on these findings, management and marketing implications for service quality improvements are discussed along with the acute need for appropriate training.

Assessing service quality in schools of business: dimensions of service quality in continuing professional education (CPE)

This paper reports the results of a study on service quality in a business school. We examine the concept of service quality with data collected from 205 executive students. The resulis obtained from applying exploratory factor analysis to our data suggest that the theoretical factor structure consisting offive factors could not be empirically replicated. The empirical factor structure consists of four factors (tangibles, faculty, administration, and reliability-empathy) being reliability-empathy the most important dimension for professional students. Confirmatory factor analysis results provide strong support for the four-dimensional structure of service quality in a business school setting.

Measuring Service Quality in Hospitals: Scale Development and Managerial Applications

Many of the most important concepts in marketing are multifaceted. Yet, the traditional approach to measuring complex constructs like service quality has proven inadequate. This article uses second order confirmatory factor analysis to validate a domain specific conceptualization of service quality in the health care area. This methodology offers two advantages for managers. First, it allows for analysis of the problem at three levels of abstraction. Second, the underlying theory upon which the conceptualization is based provides important strategic direction for solving identified problems. An illustrative example using economics of information theory is provided.

Quality and Improvement Potential in School Psychology Services

The present study evaluates the collaboration and school psychology task priority of elementary school administrators, teachers and school psychology counsellors. The aim of the study was to shed light on the subjects' service quality concepts and to evaluate the change potential of the categorical school psychology services (SPS). Factor analyses of the Collaboration Index show different quality indicators between administrators and teachers. Some support was found for agreement among school personnel, that responsiveness of school psychology counsellors is the most important quality criterion. The Task Priority Index shows overlapping preferences among the school personnel-all groups wanting extension of all services. Teachers, however, want more consultation and systemic prevention services than administrators, who were more preoccupied by the timeliness and availability of the services. Teachers who are members of special education teams evaluate the collaboration with the SPS more positively than do non-members. They also demand fewer extra services than non-members. A promising finding is the school personnel's and the SP personnel's agreement that intervention, consultation and prevention need preference over categorical services. The finding is discussed in relation to the change potential of the SPS.

Quality Management and Organisational Structure in Higher Education

The paper reviews management theories about organisational structure, culture and the environment (the market place). The reduction of variation is the starting point for comparing a number of quality management theories, in particular Deming's emphasis on designing in quality and designing out variation. The theoretical frameworks are applied to evidence on the behaviour of higher education institutions. The concept of service quality is developed. Categorisations of organisations such as ‘analytical’ or ‘cybernetic’ are seen as loo idealised to apply to real higher education institutions, which are hybrids, but some of the ideas are helpful, in particular designing a university that is in tight contact with and learns from its environment, i.e. the market place. The conclusions from this evidence take the form of a summary, drawn out of the various theories and their usefulness in higher education, of structures that could optimise organisational effectiveness, including quality management.

Marketing services: the case of a missing product

Services are processes, and hence service firms do not offer products that are comparable to preproduced bundles of physical resources and features that are provided by manufacturing companies. Instead the outcome of the process is an integral part of the service process which is consumed by customers as a solution to perceived problems. Thus the use of a service can be characterized as process consumption as opposed to outcome consumption, where only the outcome of a process is consumed or used. In the present article the marketing consequences of the process characteristics of services are analyzed and compared with the marketing of physical goods, which is characterized by outcome consumption. The most important difference is the fact that service firms do not offer preproduced products but processes as solutions to the problems of their customers. Because of the process nature of services, the fulfillment of promises given through external marketing is dependent on the attitudes and behavior of a large number of part‐time marketers. Moreover, operational systems and physical resources in the service system have to be customer oriented. To increase the understanding of service processes as solutions to customers’ problems and as objects of marketing, the present article proposes that the perceived service quality concept can provide a way to replace the missing product construct with a conceptual framework for planning a customer‐oriented process. This is illustrated by a case study in an industrial service context.

Which school of thought? The dimensions of resort hotel quality

The service quality literature has evolved around two schools of thought: the North American and the Nordic European. Although the North American School of thought has received much attention from the practitioners with a five factorial model, it has also generated a great deal of criticism. The Nordic European School of thought, on the conceptualisation of service quality, has remained for the most part at the conceptual level with few attempts at applications. Attempts to test an instrument developed by the North American School. It did not produce the nominated dimensions. In fact the result favours the Nordic European School in that it produced a two factor model.

Marketing in the UK and US Not-for-Profit Sector: The Import Mirror View

This article explores the US and UK literature on not-for-profit (NFP) marketing. The emphasis is on journal articles that have appeared in the area. The purpose of the review is to discover if their are any lessons that can be learnt from the US situation in order to gain a greater understanding of the UK NFP marketing. This is in the tradition of the ‘import mirror’ view of comparative research. The environment within which NFP marketing takes place is discussed. This is followed by a review which looks at journal types, research areas, type and quality of research and issues arising from the application of NFP marketing in the US and UK The review reveals that there is considerably more literature on NFP marketing in the US. Popular subjects are segmentation and health care. The UK literature is still largely concerned with the appropriateness and applicability of marketing in the NFP sector: The lesson taking is that the UK should not go down the US path but rather a) develop suitable courses for NFP managers and b) explore the use of the newer service concepts of relationship, service quality and internal marketing.

An attempt to measure service quality at a Belfast maternity hospital: Some methodological issues and some results

The research referred to in this paper is part of a wider comparative study of quality in maternity services. Methodological issues relating to the conceptualization of service quality and its measurement are discussed. The objectives of the reseach carried out in the Belfast maternity hospital are outlined, as are the design and specific methodologies employed. In this case, service quality was conceptualized as perceptions minus importance (P- I) . The study identified relevant service factors and divided them into clinical and non-clinical categories. Both external customers (patients and partners) and internal customers (staff) of the hospital were required to prioritize and evaluate factors in both categories. Gaps between priorities and perceptions were highlighted. The use of a specific decision rule identified service 'fail points', and provided a useful means of guiding management at the hospital, in terms of where attention and resources should be targeted in an attempt to improve quality of service. The findings are fully reported in the paper and appropriate recommendations made.

Adapting service quality concepts to academic libraries

Some of the limitations and possibilities of the service quality model for academic libraries are discussed. The model was originally developed in a commerical environment and may require some adaptation to the noncommercial environment of the academic library. Various ways in which the model might be adapted are suggested.

Searching for excellence in business education: an exploratory study of customer impressions of service quality

Examines the concept of service quality in business education with data collected from 388 students. Identifies seven factors which influence student evaluations of service quality. In descending order of importance these factors are: reputation, administrative personnel, faculty, curriculum, responsiveness, physical evidence and access to facilities. Describes the implications for controlling quality and for achieving excellence in business education.

Internal Service Quality and the Psychosocial Work Environment: An Empirical Analysis of Conceptual Interrelatedness

There is a need to integrate service quality concepts withconcepts from other research fields, such as the psychosocialwork environment, to help us better understand and create abasis for quality control in services. The main aim of this paperis to explore empirically the relationships between thepsychosocial work environment and internal service qualily. Weuse concepts and measures derived from psychosocial workenvironment theory and service quality theory respectively. Datawere collected from 555 employees in a Swedish computerservice company using questions from a Stress Profile as well asfrom a Quality Profile. All 52 items from the Stress Projile and20 items from the Quality Profile were entered into a factoranalysis. The main result of the study is not the exact outcome ofthe factor analysis per se, but rather the point that questionsderived from two different research fields appear to measuredifferent mental representations of work conditions. Clearly,interdependence exists between the psyclzosocial workenvironment and internal quality. It is quite concmon to ncap adrestructure service processes in order to improve internal qualityin an attempt to solve quality problems created by organisationalchanges. We suggest that it should be equally inportant to takenieasures to increase work satisfaction by improvingpsychosocial work conditions.

Quality Management for Poison Centers

Poison centers are struggling with the concept of service quality and how to improve it. The business world has dealt with this concept by establishing internationally agreed-upon criteria for quality management. Poison centers deliver health care services and can benefit from the approach taken by the corporate community. This review article takes the criteria of quality management proposed by the ISO 9000 series guidelines and demonstrates their applicability to poison center operations by translating the business jargon of the ISO 9000 series into terminology more familiar to health care professionals and by providing examples and approaches to satisfy specific guidelines. This article offers poison center staff a framework to help them understand how to improve the quality of service they provide.