Corporate Service Quality Research Articles

The Quality of Automotive Industry: The Remote Monitoring Complex of the Quality of Enterprises Activity of Company Car Service System

The development of the automotive industry is inextricably linked with the development of the ensuring operational effectiveness of the industry production sector, namely service maintenance. Today the car service is an important element at ensuring the competitiveness of products and a tool of improving the customer loyalty. Despite the fact that there is no direct connection between the ensuring car quality in production and the quality of service in exploitation, it is obviously that the first and the second directions definitely influence on the perceived by a consumer quality of products and services and so they form an attitude of consumer community to the brand maker. That is why the measurement of service maintenance quality is equally important for automaker as the monitoring of the quality of production processes. At the present time, in the course of solving problems on measuring quality of service maintenance, there has been found a spectrum of methods and techniques allowing to conduct quantitative (the service provider is estimated on a grade scale), qualitative (the quality of customer service is estimated by people responses) and comprehensive quantitative and qualitative researches (they include the above-described estimates). The aim of this paper is the development and implementation of corporate service quality monitoring system with using internal information of automakers enterprises which in the future, in conjunction with results of the research of the perceived quality service maintenance, will provide the most complete quality assessment covering the corporate environment of automaker and consumer environment. The development of information and computer technologies has had a beneficial impact on improving monitoring technologies of product and service quality. Development and implementation of information analysis algorithms of service quality allows getting a balanced assessment of consumers reflecting the quantitative and qualitative research area of satisfaction. However, the implementation of service quality researches based on data received by corporate information systems from proprietary service network enterprises to analytical quality services of automakers enterprises about the results of the maintenance and the elimination of defects and failures of cars are not widely represented in the literature, apart from a small group of sources. That is why this theme in the presented work is the main.

Service quality, cash flow volatility, and moderating environmental factors

Purpose– Service quality is a critical factor leading to firm returns. However, its benefit on the firm risk side metric is not clear. The purpose of this paper is to link firm service quality and firm cash flow volatility (CFV) and further investigates this relationship by incorporating the moderating effects from three environmental variables: munificence, dynamism, and complexity.Design/methodology/approach– This study is based on a secondary data approach. The data are collected from multiple sources such as AMAC and COMPUSTAT. Robust regressions with a panel data approach are adopted to analyze the data.Findings– Corporate service quality level has a strong effect in reducing firm CFV. Its impact is found to have a varied strength when the relationship is moderated by the environmental factors. In particular, it functions more strongly in high dynamism and high complexity environments.Practical implications– Service quality has effects beyond the previous thinking that is mainly concentrated on firm profits. Managers now should know that it is also effective in smoothing cash flow and thus yields benefits for future corporate planning. This is particularly meaningful for companies that operate in a turbulent industry as well as in a highly competitive market.Originality/value– This study is the first attempt that links firm service quality and firm risk factor represented by the volatility of income flow. It extends the role of service quality to an area that is increasingly emphasized by marketing researchers, e.g. the risk aspect of firm market-based assets.

Design-and-build contractors' service quality in public projects in Singapore

In the construction industry, total quality comprises corporate service quality, project service quality and quality of the constructed facility. This study investigates the project service quality of design-and-build (D&B) contractors when undertaking projects for public sector clients in Singapore. Service quality is operationalized into five determinants: reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangible. From these, 34 attributes that may affect project service quality in D&B projects are identified. A questionnaire is used to ascertain clients' service quality expectations of these 34 attributes. The clients were also asked the extent to which D&B contractors achieve project service quality. It is found that D&B contractors did not meet clients' expectations in all the five dimensions of service quality. This means that D&B contractors are not giving clients the satisfaction that they hope for. This study offers D&B contractors feedback relating to clients' expectations of their service delivery and the areas of service that need to be improved in order to provide quality service that will satisfy public sector clients.

Assessing the corporate service quality performance of design-build contractors using quality function deployment

The design-build (D/B) project delivery system has gained increased market share in the last few years. It is superior to traditional systems in some respects but some claim that it does not lend itself to effective quality assurance and control. D/B construction owners who are in the process of selecting a D/B firm for a project should therefore be well informed about the quality performance of potential D/B firms in their bidding list. Total quality consists of the corporate quality culture, the quality of the project service, and the quality of the constructed facility. This paper describes a tool that was developed to measure the corporate service quality of a D/B firm using quality function deployment (QFD). The service quality factors are ranked relative to construction owners' needs and expectations by means of a survey administered to construction owners. The components of quality management systems in place in D/B firms are ranked by D/B executives in a survey administered to senior D/B firms. The relationships between service quality factors and quality system requirements are established by a professional quality system assessor and all these attributes are integrated into one system called the Corporate Service a‘House of Quality.’ The tool developed can be used by construction owners to rank D/B firms relative to corporate service quality as well as by D/B firms to benchmark themselves against their competitors.