Consumer Perceptions Of Service Quality Research Articles

Enhancing the Competitiveness of Organic Food Shops Using the SERVQUAL Scale

Purpose - This study focused on consumer perceptions of service quality in organic food shops, the innovativeness of organic products, and which...

High-Educated Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality: An Assessment of the SSTQUAL Scale in the Romanian Banking Industry

Service quality has gained researchers’ attention all over the world. Despite the great contribution that has been made to the literature in this field so far, researchers and practitioners still need to make an attempt to better understand consumers’ perceptions of service quality in the present technological environment. In the banking context, technology enabled services such as ATMs, Internet Banking and Mobile Banking have been gradually adopted by the Romanian banks at the expense of territorial units. Therefore, banks’ management attention should be directed towards identifying consumers’ perceptions of electronic banking service quality. The aim of this paper is to evaluate consumers’ perceptions of technology enabled services within the banking industry. For this purpose, a large sample of high-educated young consumers was surveyed using the SSTQUAL dimensions. Results indicate that the SSTQUAL scale needs to be refined in order to better fit the Romanian banking context. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first which tests the SSTQUAL scale in a developing country. Therefore, the findings highlighted in this paper are of great importance both from a theoretical and a practical perspective.

Service quality in Hong Kong: wet markets vs supermarkets

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine consumer perceptions of service quality in wet markets and supermarkets in Hong Kong.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire was developed and distributed via a convenience sample to consumers in shopping malls in Causeway Bay, Mong Kok and Tsuen Wan.FindingsThe study finds that supermarkets outperformed wet markets across all aspects of service quality as measured by SERVQUAL‐P.Research limitations/implicationsImplications suggest that wet market vendors are not providing the level of service quality demanded by their customers. In particular, findings suggest that wet market vendors need to improve the visual attractiveness of their stalls, work on making them look more professional and start using more modern equipment.Practical implicationsWet market vendors in conjunction with government representatives need to develop standards of service quality for wet markets across Hong Kong. This is imperative if the wet market model is to survive in what is a highly competitive food retailing industry. Without action, it appears that the supermarketization of the Hong Kong food retailing industry will continue unabated.Originality/valueThis paper adds to a small but growing research stream examining service quality in the food retailing industry in Hong Kong. It provides empirical results that guide suggested actions for change.

Service quality and training: a pilot study

PurposeThis paper represents an initial investigation into the strategic implications of providing training to all employees of coffee shops in the UK, including baristas (coffee makers) on temporary or part‐time job contracts. In particular, the paper aims to investigate whether service quality can be significantly improved by devoting substantial resources to staff training.Design/methodology/approachTwo focus groups were conducted to obtain a demand side picture of this market. One of these groups comprised customers under the age of 30 years and the other was made up of customers between 30‐50 years of age. Managers of two coffee shops were interviewed to get a supply side view.FindingsThe attitudes of the two focus groups were surprisingly similar. Generally, customers did not expect more than basic product knowledge from their baristas. On the supply side, it emerged that the coffee chains provided basic training to all of their employees. This training was firm specific and revolved around a workbook that employees completed in a matter of weeks.Research limitations/implicationsThis market is a highly volatile one and customer expectations may well change in the near future. Moreover, future research will compare the UK coffee market with other countries, to further contextualise the results.Practical implicationsCurrent spending by firms on front line staff typically amounts to approximately £200/person per year. This research suggests that coffee shops are behaving rationally in providing limited training to their staff. There is no evidence, on the demand side, that perceptions of service quality would be enhanced by spending significantly more on training baristas.Originality/valueThis paper adds insight to the discussion surrounding consumer perception of service quality in the context of a rapidly growing market.

An Exploratory Study on Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality in Technology-Based Self-Service

Technology-based self-service (TBSS) options such as self-checkout systems, price checkers and electronic kiosks are rapidly emerging in brick-and-mortar retail stores. This study builds on existing literature by investigating the significance of service quality attributes of TBSS options in retail grocery stores. Specifically, a conceptual model is developed with proposed hypotheses to infer causation toward TBSS quality from customers' perceptions of TBSS encounters using structural equation modeling. Finally, the paper provides discussion of the research findings and future research questions.

Cognitive dissonance and the stability of service quality perceptions

This paper examines the possible relationship between post‐consumption dissonance and consumers’ time‐elapsed perceptions of service quality. A review of literature suggests that the degree of post‐consumption dissonance experienced would be inversely related to both initial ratings of service quality and subsequent time‐elapsed ratings. Empirical evidence is reported of a longitudinal study of university students undergoing a first year orientation process, which confirms this proposition. The results give some tentative indication of the instability of consumer perceptions of service quality over time.

Quality evaluation in on‐line service environments: an application of the importance‐performance measurement technique

This paper investigates the conceptualisation and measurement of service quality in on‐line service environments. It reports the findings from an exploratory study of consumer perceptions of service quality as they relate to an on‐line library service in a prominent public sector university in Western Australia. The results reveal the core service quality dimensions of significance to on‐line consumers and demonstrates the usefulness and relative simplicity of this measurement methodology for evaluating the service quality construct in on‐line environments. The study highlights not only how the service is perceived from a customer point of view, but also what is important to the customers in their use of on‐line services.

Consumer perceptions of service quality attributes at sporting events

Building on existing knowledge in the service marketing literature, this study investigates the importance of service attributes used by sports fans when evaluating the quality of their service experience at sporting events. A pool of 35 attributes was generated based on sports marketing and service quality literature, and pretest information provided from an MBA Services Marketing class and two undergraduate Sports Marketing classes. Cooperation was obtained from the athletic department of a university from a major athletic conference in the southeast. The sample was drawn from fans attending four basketball games during the month of February. The data were analyzed as follows. First, the mean importance value for each of the sports marketing service quality attributes was calculated. Next, the 35 attribute importance items were factor analyzed. Nine factors emerged from the data. The interpretation of these factors lead to the following labels (in order of variance explained): (1) employees, (2) price, (3) facility access, (4) concessions, (5) fan comfort, (6) game experience, (7) showtime, (8) convenience, and (9) smoking. After conducting the exploratory factor analysis, differences were examined in the mean importance values of these factors across a variety of demographic and fan identification characteristics.

Attributions and Outcomes of the Service Recovery Process

Drawing on attribution theory and the services marketing literature, the authors examine how the allocation of causality and length of the service recovery process impact post-recovery consumer perceptions of service quality, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions for word-of-mouth and repurchase. Results of a scenario-based repeated measures design suggest that 1) customer behavioral intentions are more favorable in stable service recoveries, 2) an employee based service recovery results in more favorable evaluations and word-of-mouth intentions, and 3) customer evaluations and behavioral intentions will be more positive for service failures remedied by expeditious and less complicated recovery processes. Managerial implications and future research directions are presented.

Survey timing and consumer perceptions of service quality: an overview of empirical evidence

Reports on a program of research to learn more about the effects of survey timing on customers’ perceptions of service quality. Argues that an individual’s perceptions of service quality may not be stable over time and that suppliers should be particularly interested in consumers’ perceptions at the time that the next re‐purchase decision is made, rather than the period immediately following consumption. Reports empirical evidence on a number of studies from the hospitality, tourism and higher education sectors in Western Australia. States that results to date cast doubt on the wisdom of the traditional exit survey approach to service quality assessment. Warns that the information derived from the traditional exit survey may not necessarily bear any relation to the chances of converting one time customers into lifetime customers. It follows that the major pre‐occupation of many organisations with measuring perceptions during or immediately following service consumption may have little relevance to service quality perceptions which are important in subsequently forming future re‐purchase intentions.

Should a firm with a reputation for outstanding service quality offer a service guarantee?

Studies reputation for service quality as a potential moderator of the relationship between a service guarantee and its impact on consumer perceptions of service quality, risk and purchase intent. A before‐after experimental design, set in the hotel industry, was employed to explore the impacts of a service guarantee for an outstanding versus a good service provider. Contrary to what had been implied in the past, the introduction of an explicit guarantee had no negative effect for the outstanding service provider in our study. In fact, the provision of a guarantee marginally improved expected quality, reduced perceived risk, and had no effect on purchase intent. However, for the good quality provider, the impacts were all positive and strong, and apart from the impact on perceived risk, the effects were significantly stronger than those for the outstanding quality provider. Our findings thus support the hypothesized moderating role of service quality.

Determinants of Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality in Restaurants

Service quality has been an issue of importance to managers and academic researchers in a variety of service industries. Most approaches to this topic have utilized a variety of multiitem questionnaires (for example, SERVQUAL) to measure consumer perceptions of service quality. Such approaches have some weaknesses including: A common set of items are assumed to apply to all settings; and, all items are assumed to be equally important in influencing consumers' evaluations of quality. Conjoint analysis is used to overcome these limitations. Using a set of attributes derived from consumers and using consumers' measures of the relative importance of these attributes it is found that consumers do show a differential ranking of the different attributes of restaurants. Those wishing to measure consumer preferences of service industries, such as restaurants, need to understand how consumers evaluate service variables before making changes in existing service mixes.

Analysing service quality in the hospitality industry

Examines the dimensions of service quality in the hospitality industry by extending the SERVQUAL scale to include eight new items that specifically pertain to the hospitality industry, subsequently referred to as HOLSERV. A total of 1,000 questionnaires were distributed at five mid‐luxury hotels in Australia during July to October 1998 and a response rate of 15.5 per cent achieved. Key findings of the study are that service quality is represented by three dimensions in the hospitality industry, relating to employees (behaviour and appearance), tangibles and reliability, and the best predictor of overall service quality is the dimensions referred to as “employees”. The findings also show that the one‐column format questionnaire provides a valid and reliable, but much shorter, survey. The major implication for managers is that improvements in the behaviour and appearance of their employees is most likely to enhance consumer perceptions of service quality.

Communicating service quality: are business‐to‐business ads different?

Service quality has been widely examined in the area of consumer research. The SERVQUAL scale, in particular, has been used to examine consumer perceptions of service quality as well as the communication of service quality cues in advertising. The literature suggests that service quality is an important purchasing criterion among business customers; however, no studies have examined how service quality is communicated through advertisements targeting business customers, as opposed to general consumers. SERVQUAL consists of five dimensions of service quality ‐ assurance, empathy, reliability, responsiveness, and tangibles. Using these dimensions as a basis for the study, a content analysis revealed that advertisements targeting business customers communicate service quality differently than ads targeting general consumers.

Purchasing's Performance as Seen By Its Internal Customers: A Study in a Service Organization

IN BRIEFIn today's Total Quality Management environment, the purchasing function is not only responsible for securing vital production and facilitating resources for its organization, it is also charged with providing quality service to its internal customers. To date, the purchasing profession does not have a widely accepted instrument to measure the dimensions of service quality within a purchasing context. This research attempts to address this void by applying SERVQUAL, an instrument that has traditionally been used to assess retail consumer perceptions of service quality, to purchasing performance within a service organization. Initial results indicate that SERVQUAL does provide the purchasing function with a useful method for obtaining feedback from its internal customers.

Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality in the Texas Retail Floral Industry

After a survey describing the range of products and services offered by Texas florists and supermarket floral departments, a modified SERVQUAL instrument measured customer perceptions and expectations of floral service quality. Florist customers were 3.2 years older, had a slightly higher household income, bought floral products twice as often from a florist, spent $14.53 more on each florist purchase than supermarket customers; they also made four fewer floral purchases from supermarkets during the previous 6 months. Supermarket customers spent $14.40 more on each supermarket floral purchase than did florist customers. Reliability was the most important and tangibles were the least important of the five service quality dimensions. Although expectations for both groups were similar on 18 of 22 service quality items, florists' customers perceived higher service quality than did supermarket customers. Although customers of both retail outlets had expectations higher than perceptions, florist customers had smaller, less negative gap scores. This result showed that florists better met customer expectations than did supermarket floral departments, a potential competitive advantage.

Measuring service quality: Is SERVQUAL now redundant?

SERVQUAL, a multiple‐item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality, was introduced in 1988 and revised in 1991 in response to some criticism from researchers who had tested the instrument. Its authors, Parasuraman et al., claim that the 22‐item questionnaire is a measure relevant to a broad spectrum of services and based on five generic quality dimensions—reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles. Design of the instrument involved rigorous methodological and conceptual development, where the latter defined perceived service quality as the degree and direction of discrepancy between customer expectations and perceptions. Further, this construct “perceived service quality”, as defined, was differentiated from satisfaction on the basis of differing expectations measures and a temporal dimension—a global view rather than a service encounter. Since 1988, several researchers have conducted studies using SER VQUAL and/or examined various aspects of the methodology. This pap...

The Roles of Service Quality, Consumer Satisfaction, and Value in Quinn’s (1992) Paradigm of Services

The existing literature strongly supports the notion that consumer perceptions of service quality, consumer satisfaction, and service value are fundamentally linked to organizational strategies and performance. In continuing this important research stream, Quinn (1992) recently presents a paradigm of service-firm strategies which shows great promise for incorporation in marketing-based strategic research. However, a limitation in the applicability of Quinn’s (1992) paradigm involves how service quality is conceptualized and operationalized in the development of the paradigm. The outcome of this limitation may be an inability to adequately capture the domains of not only service quality, but also consumer satisfaction and value in marketing models based on Quinn’s paradigm. The following paper reconciles Quinn’s (1992) paradigm with the emerging marketing-based service quality and satisfaction literatures through the development of a conceptual model of consumer decision-making in service environments. Mar...

Customer perceptions of service quality in retail financial institutions

The SERVQUAL instrument, which measures customer perceptions of service quality, is applied to retail financial institutions in Brisbane. As in the original SERVQUAL study, five factors emerged: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. Consumers’ experiences failed to match their expectations on virtually all dimensions. The study also found some differences in consumer perceptions of service quality based on age, gender and type of financial institution, suggesting that more could be done by financial institutions to segment their markets.

Measuring the Perceived Quality of Professional Business Services

Professional firms serving business clients are recognizing the need for improved quality services. Unfortunately, measures of professional service quality have proven difficult to develop. This paper reports on the use of SERVQUAL, an instrument commonly used to assess consumer perceptions of service quality. This instrument was employed with a sample of business owners who were asked to rate the quality of service received from their accounting firm. Although several dimensions of the scale proved useful, additional quality related factors emerged from the analysis.