Impact of Information Technology on Service Delivery Efficiency and User Perception : An

Empirical Study of Indian Railway’s Twitter Adoption.

1. Introduction

Service can be defined as a type of economic activity that is intangible, is not stored and does not
result in ownership. A service is consumed at the point of sale. Services are one of the two key
components of economics, the other being goods. Service sector is the third of the 3 sectors of an
economy, also called the tertiary sector. For the last 100 years, there has been a substantial shift
from the primary and secondary sectors to the tertiary sector in industrialised countries. This
shift is called tertiarisation. According to the globalist, Kenichi Ohmae. the tertiary sector is now
the largest sector of the economy in the Western world, and is also the fastest-growing sector.
Researchers have been particularly interested in studying various facets of this multifaceted
sector.
Service Delivery is concerned with where when and how a service and product is delivered to a
customer (Lovelock and Wright, 2002). Service Delivery mechanism is a well organised and
formulated structure of service sector that manages the efficient delivery of services through
service providers to consumers. Service delivery involves all facets of the process that starts with
the identification of the client’s needs and culminates with the ongoing outcome evaluation of
their use of acquired technology. Service delivery is a component of business that defines the
interaction between providers and clients where the provider offers a service, whether that be
information or a task, and the client either finds value or loses value as a result.

Service delivery systems have four key elements, as follows-

i)​ Service Culture​- It is built on elements of leadership principles, norms, work habits and vision,
mission and values. Culture is the set of overriding principles according to which management
controls, maintains and develops the social process that manifests itself as delivery of service and
gives value to customers. Once a superior service delivery system and a realistic service concept
have been established, there is no other component so fundamental to the long-term success of a
service organization as its culture.

ii) ​Employee Engagement​- It includes employee attitude activities, purpose driven leadership and
human resource processes. Even the best designed processes and systems will only be effective if
carried out by people with higher engagement. Engagement is the moderator between the design
and the execution of the service excellence model.
iii) ​Service Quality​- It includes strategies, processes and performance management systems. The
strategy and process design is fundamental to the design of the overall service management
model. Helping the customer fulfil their mission and supporting them in the pursuit of their
purpose, must be the foundation of any service provider partnership.

iv) ​Customer Experience​- It includes elements of customer intelligence, account management

and continuous improvements. Perception is king and constantly evaluating how both customer
and end-user perceive service delivery is important for continuous collaboration. Successful
service delivery works on the basis that the customer is a part of the creation and delivery of the
service and then designs processes built on that philosophy – this is called co-creation.

Service delivery mechanisms have evolved and since its evolution there has been great progress
and modification in its structure. Service Delivery mechanism has the main following parts
1. Service Delivery Framework
2. Service Delivery Platform
3. Service Delivery Channels

Service Delivery Framework​ (SDF)

A Service Delivery Framework is a set of principles standards policies and constraints to guide
the designs, development, deployment, operation and retirement provider with a view to offering
a consistent service experience to a specific user community in a specific business context.
Service Delivery Framework is the context in which a service provider’s capabilities are
arranged into services. It governs and guides the use of service delivery platform capabilities.

Service Delivery platform​ (SDP)

A Service Delivery platform is a set of components that provide a service delivery architecture
(such as service creation, session control and protocols) for the type of service delivered to
consumer, whether it be a customer or other systems. An SDP is a system that manages service
delivery across a specific domain. Typically that domain is entirely within one service
provider’s environment and is controlled by rules established by that service provider. A service
provider could have several SDPs at the same time each one controlling specific groups of
services.

Service Delivery Channels

Service Delivery Channels are the media or that part of Service Delivery Mechanism through
which services are provided by the service provider to the consumers. Service Delivery channels
are one of the important parts of Service Delivery Mechanism that are responsible for timely and
quality official service delivery. There has been great technological advancement in service
delivery channels. Letters, Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), emails, short message
service, and the recently introduced social media based channels like Twitter and Facebook.

1.2 Service Quality

The unique characteristics of service quality contribute to the complexities involved in assessing
and managing service quality. They complicate both the consumer’s assessment of service
quality and the provider’s ability to control it. It is established that service quality is a
multidimensional concept and it may mean different things to different people (Tigineh Mersha,
Veena Adlakha; 1990). Because of the importance of Information Technology (IT) in service
industries, there is a need to understand better how service customers evaluate IT- based services
and how their evaluation affects their perception of the overall quality of service. Since
customers are the end users of IT- based services, and it is their perception of quality that matters
the most, service providers must understand which attributes customers look for when
consuming services, and how IT affects customers perception of user quality (Faye X. Zhu,
Walter Wymer, Injazz Chen; 2002).
One of the most debated topics in service marketing literature is the conceptualization and
measurement of service quality perceptions (Babukus and Baller, 1992). There are two major
schools of thought, the Nordic School (Gronoos, 1982) where quality dimensions are functional
and technical, and the American school (Parsuraman et al., 1988) according to which service
encounters are assessed on the basis of various dimensions.
Researchers in defining and measuring service quality have been greatly influenced by the works
on Parsuraman et al. (1985, 1988, 1991). They conceptualize service quality as the relative
perceptual distance between customer’s expectations and evaluation of service experiences and
then have operationalized service quality using a multi-item scale called SERVQUAL
(Parsuraman; 1991). This scale was developed for measuring quality in traditional service
delivery channels, most of which have been IT-enabled. In the face of this advancement,
researchers have refined, altered and modified the scale and have developed new tools of
measurements as well. As retail sector was electronified and e-commerce took over, E-S-QUAL,
which measures service quality for e-retailers, has been increasingly used.
The quality of a Website has now emerged as an issue of strategic importance to effectively
communicate and transact with consumers.. Therefore, it became imperative to study how
websites impact service quality. SITEQUAL (Harold W. Webb, Linda A. Webb; 2004),
WEBQUAL (Loiacono, Eleanor T., et al.) were introduced as scales to measure website quality,
and how it impacts the user perception and the quality of service.

1.2 Role of Information Technology in Service Delivery

Technology is dramatically and profoundly changing the nature of services (Zeithaml and Bitner,
2000). Large number of case studies have been published by different multilateral organizations,
suggesting that IT can be used in diverse applications to accelerate information dissemination,
improve efficiency of public services, increase the transparency and accountability and improve
customer satisfaction. However, there are few analytical studies or impact assessments that
confirm that such benefits have been delivered in large-scale projects (Bhatnagar and Singh
2010).
Service delivery mechanisms have undergone a revolutionary shift as a result of the IT
revolution. In the pre-2000s, service delivery was mostly carried out through manual and less
mechanical channels. Advancement in technology services improved and automated these
channels, for example interactive voice response was being used in Service Delivery, especially
in the banking sector. Introduction of mobile services led to new channels of service delivery
being introduced, like the use of Short Message Service (SMS).
The development of the World Wide Web and the Internet caused a paradigm shift and it all
became a play of a single click. New service delivery channels like email were adopted.,
Information Technology, as we have witnessed and realised, has tremendous transformational
prowess. The way Information Technology has changed the world ever since it came into
existence is truly amazing. Economies got changed to information economies and therefore,
deliberate attempts on the part of companies, organisations and countries to take leverage of
information technology and its ever expanding application spectrum. IT applications have been
initiated to increase efficiency and reduce time. Activities and processes have been
“Electronified” and it has provided the necessary tools to become accessible and available as an
application, at any distance and place as and when required. The following are some of the
features if the IT initiative-
1. Ubiquitous
2. Fast
3. Efficiency of execution
4. Speedy services delivery

(Kamal Kumar Ghanshala; 2013) The ubiquity of information technology, including computers,
networks, optical scanners, et cetera, is obvious to everyone today (Tridas Mukhopadhyay,
Surendra Rajiv and Kannan Srinivasan; 1997). At the level of the organisation, information
technology are transforming traditional approaches to communication and coordination and
control of business activities and work processes.
The interaction between customers and service providers is also being impacted by advances in
IT which enables standardisation, and therefore, potential cost reduction for the service provider.
Recent advances in IT however have led to a situation where pre-existing assumptions on how
service is best designed and delivered are constantly being challenged. Service providers seeking
to enhance firm performance now face increasing demands to constantly provide innovative
services to customers, thus driving a need to emphasise a stronger role for IT in service (Chen et
al., 2009; Eisingerich et al., 2009; van Beuningen et al., 2009).

1.3 IT-enabled Service Delivery in Various Sectors

Technological advancements have revolutionized the service delivery in almost every service
sector, be it public sector or private sector. Hospitals, financial institutions, educational
institutions, telecommunication, commercial institutions, are all deeply influenced by the
technological development. In banking sector, banks are now committed to making available
customer service that have traditionally involved interacting with branch staff, using different
digital channels such as interactive voice response system (IVRS), telephone banking and
internet banking, encouraging customers to contact them using such digital channels rather than
by person to person contact (G. Peevers, G. Douglas, D. Marshall, M.A. Jack, 2011).

Libraries, as institutions, primarily aim to assist users in finding necessary information, no matter
when they need it and no matter where they are. A number of studies reported that more and
more users adopt Social Networking Sites not just for leisure and fun but also for finding and
exchanging information with peers (Mack​ et al., ​2007; Chu and Meulemans, 2008; Cornell,
2008).

Misopoulos et al “Micro-blogging site Twitter is among the world’s top ten social media
channels in terms of registered users and daily visits (Garg et al., 2011)” With over 160 million
registered users, average of 55 million tweets per day and 600 million search queries, Twitter is
one of the most popular social media channels for sharing information and receiving real-time
updates (Savage, 2011; Thelwall et al., 2011). Despite its concise format which allows posting
messages of only 140 characters at a time and a rather simplistic purpose (i.e. to answer the
question “What are you doing?”), Twitter proved to be one of the most favorite social media
tools for information sharing (Geho et al., 2010; Gayo-Avello, 2011; O’Leary, 2011). Its
popularity appealed to many companies, seeking to not only reach masses of customers for
sharing news and promotional material, but to also interact with them in real-time and address
issues emerging pre-, during- and post-service consumption (MacLeod, 2010).”

Mobile Technology has the potential to be used in healthcare systems as the number of mobile
phone users are rapidly expanding. Several studies have been conducted to comprehend the use
of mobile phones and the Short Message Service (SMS) in patient care (Abdlatif A, Al-
Dhaxailie, Ahmad N. Al- Enezi, Bandar F. Al-Qhtani, Khaled T. Al-Enzi and Mohammad S.
Alsultan; 2013)
Many developing countries have adopted e-government as a strategy to improve governance and
delivery of public services besides supporting national development goals (Noore Alam
Siddiquee; 2016)

2. Literature Review

2.1 Information Technology and service delivery and quality

i) Udechukwu Ojiako; (2011) “Using IS/IT to enhance service delivery”. The paper aims to
contribute to ongoing research which emphasises the expanding role of information systems and
information technology (IS/IT) as an enhancer of service delivery. In order to explore the
practical utilisation of IS/IT in the enhancement of service delivery, a case study was adopted as
the preferred research methodology. The case focused on one of the biggest telecommunications
IS/IT service providers in the UK. The study shows that the delivery of service experiences to
customers by firms operating in service provider-intensive environments is challenged by the
multi-dimensional nature of service. This study narrowed its scope and impact, considering the
fact that it was limited to a single industry (telecommunication) and only within a specified
geographic and demographic context (United Kingdom).

ii) Jane Kingman-Brundage, (1991) "Technology, Design and Service Quality". This article
studies the role of design and technology in the improvement of service quality. Service quality
can be improved through operational understanding of the customer needs and using technology
in that context. Using technology enabled approach helps the users perception to become
positive, as quality is enhanced. This paper, however, does not discuss the implications of
information technology in depth and how IT enabled organizations can raise service quality.

iii) Subhash Bhatnagar; (2014) "Public service Delivery: Role of Information and
Communication Technology in improving governance and developmental impact". The focus of
this paper is on improving governance through the use of Information and Communication
Technology in the delivery of services to the poor, i.e. , improving efficiency, accountability,
transparency, reducing corruption. It provides examples from ASEAN countries where ICT use
has improved efficiency, accountability, transparency and has reduced corruption in Service
Delivery in a variety of sectors such as health, education, food security, issue of certificate /
licences. Learning from the examples, identifies critical success factors for wide-scale
deployment of ICT in service delivery. The study does not make efforts to measure service
quality or to understand the impact on the people.

iv) Noore Alam Siddhiqui, (2016) “E-Government and transformation of service delivery in
developing countries: The Bangladesh experience and lessons”. The aim of study is to explore
e-government as a vehicle for improving governance and service delivery in Bangladesh. The
paper demonstrates the ways in which various e-initiatives have transformed traditional
administrative system and practices. The study is based on secondary research and is limited to a
single country.

v) Bhoomi Patel;(2015) " Impact of service quality on customer satisfaction of public and private
sector banks". The paper examines the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction on
public and private sector banks research is it is found that Assurance empathy responsiveness
intangibility are the four important dimensions which affect the satisfaction levels for the 6 banks
consider. The study comprises of research on only 6 banks., limited to a particular area.

vi) Chee-Wee Tan, IzakBenbasat and Ronald T. Cenfetelli; (2013) "IT-Mediated Customer
Service Content and Delivery in Elecronic Governments: An Empirical Investigation of the
Antecedents of Service Quality". The study aims at delineating e-government service quality into
aspects of IT-mediated service content and service delivery. The service content functions and
delivery dimensions translate to actionable design principles that could be leveraged by
practitioners to develop e-government websites which cater to citizens' transactional goals. The
study did not focus on services in E-Government that are IT-mediated.

2.2 IT-enabled service delivery in various sectors

i) Masood Ul Hasan, Ayaz Ahmad Malik, Muhammad Imran, Amna Hasnain and Javaria Abbas;
(2013) " Relationships among Customer's Perceived Service Quality, Satisfaction and Loyalty in
the Retail Banking Sector of Pakistan". The main purpose of the study is to determine the level
of satisfaction from the existing service quality in the retail banking sector of Pakistan and to
investigate mediating role of customer satisfaction in determining the customer loyalty from
prevailing service quality. The study is limited to one country. The sample was limited to only
retail banking customers.
ii) Jinhung Lee, Jeffrey S. MsSullough, Robert J. Town; (2013) “The impact of health
information technology on hospital productivity”. The study aims to explore the impact of health
information and how it affects hospital productivity. This study focused on the employment of IT
capital and labour and how it affects productivity. This study, however, did not concentrate on
the quality of the healthcare after the impact on productivity was assessed.

iii) H.S Hassan and E Shehab, J. Peppard; (2011) “Recent Advances in e-services in the public
sector: state-of-the-art and future trends”. This paper aims to thoroughly review the research
literature concerning e-services in the public sector (2000-2009) for the purpose of summarizing
and synthesizing the arguments and ideas of the main contributors to the development of
e-service research and explore the different perspectives of approaches to e-service. Most of the
literature has focused on the underlying perspectives of approaches to e-service. It clearly
acknowledges that contextual issues and factors influence e-service. Little work has been done to
offer further scope of research and give helpful and practical guidance for e-service in the public
sector/ e-government in the developing countries. The implication of this research is ambiguous.

iv) Oluwagbemi Oluwa tolani, Abah Joshua, Achimugu Philip; (2011) “The impact of
information technology in Nigeria’s Banking Industry”. This paper presents the current trend in
the application of IT in the banking industry in Nigeria and gives an insight into how quality
banking has been enhanced via IT. As a result, Nigerian banks have rapidly transformed from
being just a bank to a one-stop-shop financial solution provider. The study is limited to one
country. It has focused on the service delivery and the impact of IT on the quality of service has
not been assessed.

v) Fang-Ming Hsu, Tser-Yieth Chen and Shuwen Wang; (2010) “The role of customer values in
accepting information technologies in public information service sector”. This study investigated
the causal relationship between users’ perception and information technology acceptance.
Results suggests that the perceived value of users plays an important and mediating role in the
causal relationship among social influence process, cognitive instrumental process, and intention
to use. The study focuses more on secondary research than on primary research.

vi) Nilubon Sivabrovornvatana, Sununta Siengthai; (2005) “Technology usage, quality

management system, and service quality in Thailand”. This article aims to explore the
relationship between technology and quality management for enhancing Thai hospital service
quality. The nature of the study is primarily conceptual and the qualitative in-depth interviews
are exploratory at best. The study is specific to Thai hospitals, therefore the findings cannot be
generalized.
vii) Gurmeet Singh, RD Pathak, Rafia Naz, Rakesh Bewal; (2010) “E-governance for improved
public sector delivery in India, Ethiopia and Fiji”. The study focuses on the citizen perception of
the problem of corruption and how e-governance can be used to tackle it. The central finding is
that e-governance is positively related to the government- citizen relationship and corruption
reduction.​ ​This study is highly empirical and does not provide case studies to further extend on
the findings.

2.3 service delivery channels and their impact on service quality

i) ​Roper, Steven D. “Conducting a Distance Education Course When You Are the Distant One.”
This article discusses the role and use of information technology and emails to deliver education
as a service. It presents the level of efficiency that can be achieved through using these tools for
distance education. The primary focus is on the delivery and not on the quality of service. This
seems to a significant challenge, as mechanisms are given more significance and are often
considered in isolation, without considering the quality.

ii) Dr. Garima Malik, Mr. Kapil Gulati; (2013) “An Exploratory Study on Adoption and Use of
SMS/ Mobile Banking in India with Special Reference to Public Sector Banks”. The study is
sought to investigate the perceptions of banks and customers regarding the adoption of
technology. The findings revealed that mobile banking is still in its infancy. Evidence showed
that accessibility and security were the major hurdles to the adoption of SMS banking. The study
does not extrapolate on the user perception of this channel.

iii) Sridevi Jetty, John Paul Anbu K. ; (2013) “SMS- based content alert system: a case with
Bundelkhad University Library, Jhansi”. This study aims to look at how SMS-based mobile
alerts can be effectively implemented in libraries for successfully marketing library services and
providing value-added services. It proves that a successful SMS-based alert service similar to an
SDI service can be implemented using SMS messaging and has the potential to market library
services to its patrons. The study only takes faculty members in to consideration, thus limiting its
scope.

iv) G. Peevers, G. Douglas, D. Marshall and M.A. Jack; (2011) “On the role of SMS for
transaction confirmation with IVR telephone banking”. The purpose of this paper is to deliver
empirical results on the effects of (out-of-band) short message service confirmations after the
transaction has been completed in an automated interactive voice response (IVR) telephone
banking service. Transaction confirmation has shown to be important to customers. However,
real world use of a telephone banking service may differ from the experimental condition.

2.4 Social Media as a Channel of Service Delivery

i) ​Gina Ciancio and Amanda Dennett; (2015) “Social Media for Government Services: A Case
Study of Human Services”. The study aimed to explore social media by The Australian
Government Department of Human Services. It explained how It explains how well the
department is Managing reputation and meeting the needs of citizens to social media. Study is
based on Australian government only also only one service sector.

ii) Marie Griffiths, Rachel MacLean; (2015) " Unleashing Corporate Communications by social
media: A study of brand management and conversations with customers. " It explores the impact
of social media adoption and use on corporate communication image. Deepu concluded that
while some companies and public organisations are beginning to understand the importance of
real conversations with customers only a small number have adopted the human brand approach
this study is based only on a single country specifics and limited social media accounts have
been considered.

iii) Evgenia Vassilakaki and Emmanouel Garoufallou; (2015) " The impact of Twitter on
libraries; review of the Literature". The paper aims to present a critical view on the adoption and
use of Twitter in libraries. A systematic and critical analysis of the literature review the specific
reasons why a library should adopt return the study focus more on secondary approach that
primary approach.

iv) Feng Xiong and Kim MacKenzie; (2015) "The business use of Twitter by Australian listed
companies". Aim of study was to explore the business use of Twitter by the top 100 a s x that is
Australian securities exchange listed Corporation in 2013. Plastic analysis of listed companies' to
ensure that company is from different industry sectors use Twitter for different purposes. Based
on limited companies of a country. Also, the Service Delivery aspect of Twitter was not focused
upon.

v) Gohar Feroz Khan, Ho Young Yoon, Jiyoung Kim and Han Woo Park; (2014) " From
e-government to social government: Twitter used by Korea's Central Government". This study
aims to explore Twitter used by Korea's Central Government by classifying the governments
Twitter based networking strategies into Government-to-Citizen (G2C) and
Government-to-Government (G2G) strategies. The results indicate that the government's direct
networking strategy targeting citizens does not necessarily motivate their participation in the
government social media activities but that it plays an instrumental role in reinforcing G2G
relationships. Study is analysed Twitter used in only one country and therefore the generalization
of the findings may be problematic. Also, more focus is on increasing followers than on
addressing citizens' needs.
vi) Foris Misopoulos, Miljana Mitic, Alexandros Kapoulas and Christos Karapiperis; (2014)
"Uncovering customer service experiences with twitter: The case of airline industry". The goal of
the study was to uncover customer opinion about services by monitoring and analysing public
Twitter commentaries. By analysing Twitter posts for their sentiment polarity the authors were
able to identify areas of customer service that caused customer satisfaction, dissatisfaction as
well as delight. The research has focused solely on the airline industry. Also, it only on one
social media channel, Twitter.

vii) Ilkyu Ha and Chonggun Kim; (2014) "Understanding User Behaviours in Social Networking
service for Mobile Learning: A case study with Twitter". In this paper, an experiment using
Twitter is conducted for college classes to understand the effects on college student engagement
and grades. Twitter can be used as a useful tool in educational environment and activities on
Twitter have some relationship with the offline activities. The study is limited to the educational
use of twitter and has negligible focus on the service delivery aspect of Twitter.

2.5 Tools for measurement of Service Quality

i) Jamie Charlson, Suku Sinnapam, Ranjit Voola; (2005) “Application of the WEBQUAL
Instrument to Three Australian B2C Websites: An Exploratory Investigation”. The objective of
this exploratory investigation was to apply the Webfnial model within the context of Australian
online B2C commerce and present some preliminary findings across three B2C i.e. airline,
computers and e-retail.because the respondents consisted of university students, generalizability
beyond this population of the findings must be taken with caution. The respondents'
demographics may have influenced their perceptions of Website quality performance. This
measure of service quality is applicable only when the websites are used as an interface for
interaction between users and service providers, which is not the case in our study’s context.

ii) Farnaz Beheshti, Mohd Shoki Md Ariff, Mohsen Ashourian; (2012) “E-Service Quality
Dimensions and Their Effects on E-Customer Satisfaction in Internet Banking Services”. This
study assessed the use of E-SERVQUAL scale to construct e-Service Quality (e-SQ) for internet
banking services. In addition, it attempted to examine the effect of e-SQ on e-Customer
satisfaction (e-CS). A significant positive relationship exists between e-SQ and e-CS in internet
banking. The regression analysis performed showed that security/trust, site aesthetics, and ease
of use of the internet banking services have positive effects on e-CS.

iii) David Xin Ding, Paul Jen-Hwa Hu and Olivia R. Liu Sheng developed e-SELFQUAL: a
scale for measuring online self-service quality. Ding et al: (2009) “Substantial research examines
online services using salient scales primarily developed for personnel-orchestrated, face-to-face
services; several recently developed scales that target online services focus on important
information and/or system characteristics but do not consider e-retailers' fundamental roles
holistically. The reported research synthesizes relevant previous research and proposes a
conceptual framework to examine the quality of online self-services in e-retailing. The proposed
framework then guides a scale development effort that includes a series of pilot and validation
studies. The resulting scale, e-SELFQUAL, provides a means for examining the relationships
between online service quality and customer satisfaction, as well as loyalty in e-retailing. This
study has several important implications for research and business practices”.

3. Research Gap

Through the extensive literature review and secondary research, several gaps have been
identified. Most of the research concerning the use of social media has been in cases where it
was used either as a method of publishing information or collecting feedback from the existing
customers. Social Media, especially Twitter, is recently gaining attention from researchers as a
business tool. However, this is limited to the private sector companies. Literature review does
not reflect on the use of Twitter as a means of real time service delivery, as in the case of the
Indian Railways. The study of Twitter on the whole has been limited in the Indian context, and
leaves a significant scope for further research.
Service quality measurement through Social Media has not been as extensive either. The scales
of measurement and analysis of quality of service that exist focus more on either traditional
channels of service delivery (SERVQUAL) or on e-retail and e-commerce. There is no
instrument to measure service quality through Twitter. Therefore, that is one of the research gaps
that the paper aims to contribute to as there is a need to develop a tool which can understand and
analyze service quality through social media. This tool will have far-reaching implications.
User perceptions have not been assessed in-depth for any government service in India.

Based on the research gap observed, following research questions have been formulated-
- What is the impact of Twitter on service delivery?
- How has Twitter affected service quality?
- Have user perceptions changed as a result of using Twitter?
- Does the adoption of Twitter improve or enhance the perception level of users?

4. Research Objectives
The research objective can be stated as follows-
1. To assess the improvements in the quality of service because of Twitter.
2. To analyze the impact of social media leveraged service delivery on user perceptions.

5. Methodology

For the first objective, modified E-SERVQUAL type of questionnaire will be used. The
dimensions will be altered so as to suit the objective and context of this research
For the second objective, sentiment analysis, also called opinion mining will be employed.

Dimension Parameters

Efficiency

Through the past 2 decades, several instruments to measure service quality have been developed.
SERVQUAL scale is identified as a major measurement tool to measure the customer
perceptions. This was derived by Parasuraman et al. defined perceived quality as ‘the consumers’
judgment about an entity’s overall excellence or superiority’. Service quality evaluation leads to
better performances only if customer expressed. The SERVQUAL employs a questionnaire of 22
items related to fixed dimensions (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy),
averaged to yield a Total Quality Management 1331 global quality measure. SERVQUAL,
however, was developed to measure more traditional dimensions of service quality, which cannot
be used for our study.

To measure the service quality of websites, Yoo and Donthu (2001) created SITEQUAL- an
integrated scale to measure website quality. Since this paper’s focus is not related to the website
quality of Twitter, this scale will be inappropriate as our instrument.
Loiacono et al. (2002) presented WEBQUAL as a measure of website quality with 5 initial
dimensions- Ease of use, Usefulness, Entertainment, Complimentary Relationship and Customer
Service. Out of these, service quality was just a single dimension and it was described as “the
response to customer’s inquiries, comments and feedback”.
This view of customer service was found to be incomplete and a more holistic set of dimensions
were required.

Parsuraman et al (2005) improvised on his SERVQUAL scale and developed E-S-QUAL- a

scale to measure electronic service quality. This instrument has been widely used by various
researchers to analyse and assess service quality in tandem with e-commerce. Four primary
dimensions were identified- Efficiency, System Availability, Fulfilment and Privacy. There were
then divided in 22 factors affecting online service quality.
This scale was developed with e-commerce as its background and the dimensions focused on the
thorough process on online e-retail.
E-Resc-QUAL is a model for measuring electronic service quality containing 11 items in three
dimensions: responsiveness, compensation, and contact, which are employed when customer had
nonroutine encounters to measure the effectiveness of handling problems and return,
compensation for problems, and availability of assistance, respectively. This is a complementary
service measurement tool in tandem with E-S-QUAL.

This scale includes 4 dimensions- Perceived Control, Service Convenience, Service Fulfilment,
Customer Service. However, as was observed by the authors of the e-SELFQUAL, this was an
early attempt and has to be refined to be used in a more widespread context, in terms of
geography and cultural contexts. The implications of this scale to our study is limited and
narrow.

The quality of a Website has now emerged as an issue of strategic importance to effectively
communicate and transact with consumers. As the development of Internet technology continues,
coupled with the flux of online competition with a click of a mouse enough for an online
customer to select a new provider (Singh, 2002), the measurement of perceived Website quality
has forced academics and practitioners to develop rigorous and reliable methods. Thus, the
conceptualization and the measurement of Website effectiveness, or quality, have now received
growing coverage within the Information Systems (IS) and marketing literature.
(file:///C:/Users/5/Desktop/WEBQUAL%20for%20sirline,%20comp%20and%20retail%20aussi
e.pdf)
WEBQUAL, therefore was developed by Eleanor T. Loiacono , Richard T. Watson & Dale L.
Goodhue (2002) as an instrument for consumer evaluation of websites. This measure has been
used for over a decade in various industries, which have taken their businesses online.
Lowry et al: (2008) “Explaining and Predicting the Impact of Branding Alliances and Web Site
Quality on Initial Consumer Trust of E-Commerce Web Sites” studied the initial impact of
website quality on consumers and how it effects brand alliances. WEBQUAL was used as a scale
for the measurement of website quality. Appeal, response time, flow, image, operations, better
than alternatives, innovativeness, interactivity and usability are some of the system related
factors which are measured through this tool. The focus of this scale has been limited to website
design and other related factors, emphasis on service delivery through websites has been
negligible. Since this paper is concerned with service delivery efficiency, therefore, this scale
cannot be employed in its totality.

Do a literature review of evolution from prior studies of service quality measurement tools, and
why we are modifying it- new parameters

Include earlier synopsis lit review

Introduce the railway from earlier draft
Also do a review of the terms

Research gaps

Research Objectives and questions

Methodology used- modified SERVQUAL and sentiment/ content analysis

Res
The service sector also called tertiary sector is the third of the three traditional economics sectors
the others are the secondary sector and the primary sector the service sector consists of the
production of services also known as intangible goods instead of end products activities and the
service sector include retail Banks hotel Royal Estate education health Social Work Computer
Services recreation media Communications electricity gas and water supply all these services
reach the consumers through a specialised mechanism that forms the backbone of every service
sector known as the Service Delivery mechanism it will be true to say that service sector is
Losing its meaning if services do not reached the consumer in an efficient way as such it is the
Service Delivery mechanism that governs and ensures the delivery of services from service
providers to consumers since the origin of service sector service delivery has been an important
concern not just fit service providers who are always keen to deliver the best possible service
they can but also for consumers who keep on expecting something better in every step as on one
hand this concern was growing day by day on the other hand Technology was dripping the world
with its inventions and the solution for delivering the services efficiently that could stand on a
better level of consumer satisfaction was found in the growing technology and one of its recent
advancements namely information technology that recognised the structure of Service Delivery
mechanism. Where is modifications for being made in Service Delivery mechanism the old
policy is your amended some new policies were introduced and the whole structure button you
look. Amidst all changes and modifications the most influential was the introduction of new
Service Delivery channels that gave a new trends to the delivery of services from letters to email
fax to Short Message Service and the best among all the channel of social media like Twitter and
Facebook that shut out the barriers of one way communication between service provider and
consumer that brought it under public domain. All these advancements in completely
revolutionized service Delivery process and raise the level of satisfaction among customers with
services they receive and consume

(introduction of services, what are service sectors? Dift sectors

Cut down the instruments part, shorten it, like in the e-selfqual paper
Overview of service quality
Make it more connected
Find out more relavent literature

Service quality remains of focal interest to researchers and practitioners. Many researchers
consider service quality a measure of how well the delivered service level meets the customer's
Expectation (Ding, 2009). Building on this conceptualization, Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry
(1985, 1988) develop and refine SERVQUAL, a multi-item scale for measuring the quality of
face-to-face services with five dimensions: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and
empathy. A review of extant marketing literature suggests that service quality, as measured by
SERVQUAL, can influence important service outcomes, such as customer satisfaction, intention,
or loyalty (Parasuraman et al., 1988) Compared with the abundant research examining the
quality of face-to-face services, investigations of online service quality remain in their infancy
(Serkan et al., 2010). A common approach adapts or extends SERVQUAL to assess online
services (DeLone and McLean, 2003). However, face-to-face services differ from online services
in their fundamental quality dimensions. Take e-retailing for example: Customers often demand
more control, expect to incur less effort, and anticipate higher transaction efficiency (Ding et al.,
2007).

As Parasuraman et al. (2005) comment, attempts to adapt or extend a face-to-face service scale
to measure or evaluate online service quality may lead to decreased reliability, questionable
convergent validity, constrained predictive validity, or diminished adequacy and efficacy. As the
Information and Communication Technologies revolutionized, several online service quality
scales were developed in prior studies. Zienthaml et al. (2000) developed E-SQ, which measured
several system related dimensions in the online retail industry. Ease of navigation, access, price
knowledge, design, speed, privacy and personalization held negligible relevance to this paper’s
objective.

A handful of scales measure Web site quality (Loiacono et al., 2002; Yoo and Donthu, 2001),
online service quality (Bauer et al., 2006; Parasuraman et al., 2005; Zeithaml et al., 2000), or
e-retailing quality (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2003). In general, these scales derive from rigorous
development efforts and focus on important characteristics pertaining to information or the
system; few consider the service dimension of online services comprehensively (Nelson et al.,
2005; Wixom and Todd, 2005). SITEQUAL primarily targets system quality, whereas e-TailQ
and E-S-Qual emphasize system quality and service quality.