Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, in highly competitive marketplace, businesses across industries are

recognizing the importance of service quality and customer satisfaction as critical

factors for success and sustainable growth. Among these industries, the car wash

sector plays a significant role in ensuring the cleanliness and maintenance of vehicles,

catering to the ever-increasing demand for convenient and efficient automotive care.

A car wash business is a profitable venture that provides a range of services to

customers, including exterior and interior cleaning, detailing, and maintenance of

vehicles. The demand for car wash services continues to increase as people prioritize

the upkeep of their cars for both aesthetic and functional reasons.

Service quality and customer satisfaction are important aspects of business since

a company’s growth is largely dependent on how well it maintains its customers through

service and how well they keep their customers satisfied (Edward and Sahadev, 2011).

According to Chang et al. (2017); customer satisfaction is expected to result from good

service efficiency, which will improve customer engagement and interrelationship.

González et al. (2007) asserted that customer satisfaction is linked to high service

quality, which makes businesses more competitive in the marketplace.

In this business research study, we aim to examine the relationship between

service quality and customer satisfaction in selected car wash businesses in REINA

area, Real, Infanta, and Nakar Quezon. We will conduct a comprehensive analysis of
the service quality factors (such as tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and

empathy) that affects customer satisfaction (in terms of price, service, and cleanliness).

The findings of the study will provide valuable insights for car wash business

owners, managers, and investors, helping them to identify areas for improvement in

service quality and customer satisfaction, as well as strategies to enhance business

performance and competitiveness.

Background of the study

Transportation moves people and goods to different neighborhoods, cities,

states, and countries; and it allows people in those various places to trade and do

business together.

Service quality is considered as an important factor driving customer satisfaction

in the service environment. Andaleeb and Conway (2006), said that since the car wash

business belongs to service sector in terms of quality of service it can determine the

customer satisfaction. To assure that the quality of service is good, customer is

convinced to repeat the demand of service. It shows customer behavioral towards

service provider. The quality of service that fulfills customer expectations will gain the

customer loyalty. (Kaura, Prasad & Sharma 2015)

The customer satisfaction is achieved if a customer feels that services delivered

by a service provider may fulfil his/her needs, expectation and/or goals just like in car

wash businesses the more quality of cleaning their cars the more the customer

satisfaction was achieved.

 The researchers came up with this study entitled Service Quality and customer

satisfaction of selected Car Wash Businesses because a time will come when cars will

become in demand in all aspects and will become a great help to those car wash

businesses improve their services, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and

ultimately drive business performance.

Theoretical framework

One of the most widely used instruments in assessing service quality is the

SERVQUAL. Theory developed by Zeithmalety, at (1985), Parasuraman et.al (1988)

SERVQUAL is widely organized and use and it is regulated, as applicable to a number

of industries. The exploratory study comprised of interview and focus groups led

Parasuraman, et al to make definition on service quality as the discrepancy between

customer satisfaction and expectation and to identify general dimension that represents

the evaluative criteria customer were used to assess service quality. The researcher

named this dimension as reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangible.

In the experience in starting point in developing, the quality and services is analysis and

measurement. The SERVQUAL approach or theory, which studied in this research, is

the most common method in measuring service quality rendered by the selected car

wash businesses in Real, Infanta, and Nakar, Quezon

Among the theories regarding customer satisfaction, the expectancy and

disconfirmation theory is the most popular. The Expectancy-Disconfirmation Theory

(EDT) is a model used to understand customer satisfaction and post-purchase

evaluations. It suggests that satisfaction is determined by comparing customers'

expectations of a product or service with their perceptions or experiences of the actual

product or service received. If the perceived quality of service exceeds the expectations,

the expectation is positively disconfirmed and the person or group of people is satisfied.

On the Contrary if the perceived performance falls short of the expectation is positively

confirmed and the customer is dissatisfied.

Conceptual Framework

This paradigm consists of three boxes. The first box showing the independent

variables, are the service quality of car wash in terms of tangible, reliability,

responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The second box showing the dependent

variables, are the customer satisfaction in terms of price, service and cleanliness. Last,

the third box, which is consisting of moderating variables, are the demographic profile of

the respondent such as age, sex, civil status and occupation. The line that connects the

independent, dependent variable and moderating variables shows the relationship of

the three.
Conceptual Paradigm

Independent variables Dependent variables

Service quality of car Customer satisfaction of

wash in terms of: car wash in terms of:

 Tangible  Price

 Reliability  Service

 Responsiveness  Cleanliness

 Assurance

 Empathy

Demographic profile of the

respondents in terms of:

 Age

 Sex

 Address

 Civil status

 Occupation

 Monthly income

Moderating Variable
 Figure 1. Conceptual Paradigm of the Study

Statement of the Problem

This study aims to determine the Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction of

selected Car Wash Businesses are aimed to answer the following questions:

1. What is the demographic profile of the respondents in terms of:

1.1 Age;

1.2 Sex;

1.3 Address;

1.4 Civil status;

1.5 Occupation;

1.6 Monthly income?

2. What is the service quality of car wash in terms of:

2.1 Tangible;

2.2 Reliability;

2.3 Responsiveness

2.4 Assurance;

2.5 Empathy?

3. What is the customer satisfaction of car wash in terms of:

3.1 Price;

3.2 Service;
 3.3 Cleanliness?

4. Is there a significant relationship between the demographic profile of the

respondents and the service quality of car wash?

5. Is there a significant relationship between the demographic profile of the

respondents and the customer satisfaction of car wash?

6. Is there a significant relationship between the service quality of car wash and

the customer satisfaction of car wash?

Hypotheses

The researcher will test the following hypotheses:

HO1. There is no significant relationship between the profile of the respondents

and the service quality of car wash.

HO2. There is no significant relationship between the profile of the respondents

and the customer satisfaction of car wash.

HO3. There is no significant relationship between the service quality of car wash

and the customer satisfaction of car wash.

Significance of Study

This study aims to determine the Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction of

selected Car wash businesses in Real, Infanta, and Nakar, Quezon. The researcher

believes that the result of this study will be significant to the following:

To the entrepreneur. This study will give them a lot of information about on how to run

a car wash business.

 To the car owners. This study will be a great help to them to identify the car

wash businesses that provide high-quality services and customer satisfaction

To the Business owner. This will be a big help for the business owner to be

knowledgeable if some instances happened by making other alternatives.

To the community. The result of the study will give them awareness for the

service quality of car wash business.

To the future researcher. This study will provide assistance in conducting

similar research, which is related to this study.

Scope and Limitation

The study mainly focused on determining the service quality and customer

satisfaction of selected car wash businesses in Real, Infanta, and Nakar, Quezon. A

total of 100 car owners were selected as respondents which conducted from December

to May 2020 in selected car wash businesses in Real, Infanta, and Nakar, Quezon. The

researcher used a survey questionnaire to measure the service quality and customer

satisfaction of a car wash.

Operational Definition of Terms

For the readers to easily understand the terminologies used in this study, the

following terms were defined operationally:

Tangibles. The appearance of the car wash physical facilities, equipment, personnel

and communication materials.

Reliability. The ability to perform the promised service of car wash dependently and

accurately.

Responsiveness. The willingness of a car wash to help a customer and provide prompt

service.

Assurance. Refers to knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire

trust and confidence.

Empathy. Refers to caring individualized attention the car wash provides its customer.

Customer satisfaction. It is the feeling of the customer when car wash fulfils their

needs and wants.

Service quality. It is the service provided by the car wash to satisfy the customer

Car wash. It is a place offered services for cleaning cars.

Service. work done by the employees of car wash to satisfy their needs.

Price. It is the amount of money to be paid in exchange of the service.

 Chapter 2
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Some literatures and studies were found to have similarities in order to have

working basis in the conduct of this study. Appropriate studies and literature were

consulted and presented as follows:

Service Quality

Parasuraman (2010) defines service quality as “the difference between customer

expectation and perception of service” They argued that measuring service quality as

the difference between perceived and expected service was a valid way and can make

management to identify gaps to what they offer as services.

Service quality is an approach that manages the business processes in order to

ensure full satisfaction of the customer, which helps to increase competitiveness and

effectiveness of the service industry. Quality and service is very important especially in

growth and development of service sector business enterprises. (Rahaman et.al 2011)

Service quality has been defined by the practitioners in terms of key dimensions

that customer use while evaluating of services (Lewis and Booms 2011).

Ewers (2010) suggested that institutions have employees attend customer

service training sessions to learn the basic of customer service.

NT Jamaludin et.al (2014) opined that organizations pay more attention to

customers as offering service quality survive as a center of excellence.

 Harris and Goode (2012) said that the cognitive type of loyalty refers to the

existence of thoughts.

Keller and Kotler (2009) mentioned that the service components can be

distinguished to five categories by offerings, first is pure tangible good with no service

accompanying with the goods. The second offering is tangible good accompanied by

one or more services. The third consist equal parts of goods and services.

Service delivery is prime determinant of customer satisfaction. 50% vehicle were

delayed due to overload of service centre which causes customer dissatisfaction and

that problem can be solved by installing automated machines for washing and cleaning

of vehicle in working shift can also be manage (Katarne and Sharma 2010)

Customer Satisfaction (CS)

Parker and Mathews (2010) discussed that satisfaction as a process is the most

widely adopted description of customer satisfactions and a lot of research effort have

been directed at understanding the process approach of satisfaction evaluation.

Osman and Rahbar (2010) showed that the customer satisfaction is achieved if a

customer feels that services delivered by a service provider may fulfil his/her needs,

expectation and/or goals.

Sit et. al. (2009) cited in Aborampah (2010) points out that once customer are

satisfied and have a positive image or intentions about a particular firm, it will take some

time for competitors to snatch or convince them to switch to them. According to Kotler &
Keller (2006); Reichheld (1996); Rust et. al. (1994); Heskett et. al. (1994) cited in

Wandaogou & Jalulah (2011) CS has been recognized as an important element that

drives customer retention, loyalty and post-purchase behavior of customers. Therefore,

CS helps companies to derive several benefits which include loyalty, repurchasing to

increase sales or profits, speaking well about the products or services to others to

purchase

Howard (2012), also showed that the satisfied customers are likely to form or

reinforce positive brand attitudes , which would lead to customer loyalty in the sense of

more frequent purchases in greater volume and purchase of other goods and services

offered by a firm.

Oliver (2009) asserted that satisfaction is the customer’s fulfilment response. It is

a judgemental that a product or service features, or the product or service itself,

provides a pleasurable level of consumption related fulfilment.

Formell (2012) discussed that the customer satisfaction will influence the

demand supply since it is different. Satisfaction will be low when the customer demands

heterogeneous and the supply is homogenous. To retain customer, switching barriers

make it costly for customer to switch to customers and customer satisfaction makes it

costly to competitor to take away another firms customer.

The customer satisfaction was characterized as the customer evaluation a

product or a service as far as whether that product or service has addressed the

customer’s needs and expectations (Alan, Valerie A., Mary Jo and Dwayne D, 2012)
 Customer satisfaction is the customer overall feeling of contentment with a

customer interaction it recognizes the difference between customer expectations and

customer perceptions (Harris 2013).

Tangible

McDougall and Snetsinger, tangibility defined “the degree to which a product or service

can provide a clear concrete image”. They investigate in the definition further and state

that tangibility has both a physical and a mental component tangibles are defined “the

physical evidence of the service”.

Reliability

Reliability as the ability to perform the promised service dependably and

accurately (Leblanc 2014).

Reliability means “Doing what they say they are going to do when they said they

were going to do it” (Zeithaml 2009).

Reliability is attributed to accountability and quality. There are a bunch of

precursors that likewise aid basic methodology for shaping clients’ perspectives toward

administration quality and reliability in the car care industry in Saudi (Korda and Snoj,

2010; Omar et al., 2015).

Reliability has been defined by Armstrong (2012) as the ability to perform the

promise service exactly and dependably which implies the capacity of the service

provider to perform services in an accurate and dependable manner (Safwan et. al

2010).
Price

Price is a critical factor in consumer decision making. Several studies have

highlighted its significance in influencing purchase intentions and choices. For instance,

Monroe (2003) found that price is a dominant factor affecting product evaluation and

purchase decisions. Furthermore, Zeithaml (1988) suggested that price is one of the

most salient extrinsic cues consumers consider when evaluating products or services.

Price is the means of substitute with which we get value that can either in

tangible (goods) and intangible service (Butt, 2011). For satisfaction customer is willing

to give a smaller amount in as a result in other words we can say that less price is

honestly associated to high degree of customer trust and high quality is related to high

scale of consumer satisfaction. Satisfied customer pay extra price for product or

services. (Ali et.al 2010). Overall, Grewal et al. (1998) found that consumers' perception

of price as a signal of product quality affects their purchase decisions.

Responsiveness

The degree to which clients can be accommodated by providers includes

responsiveness and timely service. The desire to offer quick service and to assist clients

is what we called responsiveness and good quality service (Armstrong 2012).

Responsiveness refers to the institution’s ability to provide fast and good quality

service in the period. It requires minimizing the waiting duration for all interactions

between the customer and the service provider (Nambisan et al., 2016). Nambisan et al.

(2016) explained that responsiveness is crucial for enhancing the customers’ perception
of service quality. Rather, the institution should provide a fast and professional response

as to the failure and recommend alternative actions to address the customer’s needs

(Lee et al., 2000).

Assurance

Quality assurance is intended to ensure accountability and/or to bring about

improvement (Canadian Council of Learning 2009).

According to Marshall et al. (2003), assurance is defined as the competence and

courtesy extended to customers. Assurance is a dimension described by Parasuraman

et al. (1988) as the employees“ knowledge, courtesy, and liability to inspire trust and

confidence. This dimension is important for service provider. Customer perceives high

risk when they feel uncertain about the outcomes. Trust and confidence of the

employees embodies the organization that they work for.

Empathy

Janssen’s three components framework such as (1) Cognitive Empathy

(perceiving another person’s emotional state) and (2). Convergence of feelings between

people (emotional convergence), typically considered within social interaction and

directly related to postural, vocal or psychological changes along with facial expressions

and (3) Responding to another’s feelings (Motivation to action empathic responding).

(Janssen’s 2012)

Cleanliness
 As opposed to actual cleanliness, perceived cleanliness is based on information

captured through the senses (Orstad et. al, 2017).

Chua et.al (2015) identified perceived cleanliness as an organism variable

influencing customer satisfaction.

 Chapter 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter represents the method used by the researcher in collecting

information and data for the study which includes the research design, respondents of

the study, sampling technique, Gantt chart, budgetary requirements, data gathering

procedures, research instrument and statistical tools.

Research Design

In this study, descriptive method was used by the researcher. Kathryn Barnard

(1981), said that the most basic design and where the search begins is the descriptive

approach. The relationship between behaviours, individuals or events as they occur,

and the better understanding of relationship between variables could see through

description.

The researcher used this method because it aimed to determine the service

quality and customer satisfaction of selected car wash businesses in Siniloan, Laguna.

A lot of techniques was used in data collection in descriptive research and the most

common method used in gathering information and data was interviews or

questionnaire checklist.

Respondents of the Study

The study was entitled Service Quality and Customer satisfaction of selected Car

Wash Businessess in REINA area in Quezon Province, Real, Infanta and Nakar. The

respondents of this study were all the car owners who took their vehicles in selected car
washes. The study focused on the selected car wash businesses in Siniloan, Laguna

with a total of 100 respondents.

Sampling Technique

This study used a type of non-probability sampling design which is the purposive

sampling technique in which the researcher relies on his or her own judgement when

choosing members of population to participate in the study. The researcher used this

sampling technique since the respondents of this study relied on specific characteristics

to answer the survey questionnaire.

Data Gathering Procedures

The researcher visited the places of selected car wash businesses to ask

personally for some relevant data to determine the service quality and customer

satisfaction of selected car wash businesses in siniloan, Laguna. The researcher made

a questionnaire sheet which was validated by the panelist.

The questionnaires were prepared for the respondents to help them evaluate the

service quality and customer satisfaction of car wash. After the approval of request

made by the researcher in selected car wash businesses the questionnaire was

explained and distributed by the researcher to all car owners as respondents, and

collecting of data was done. The direct interview was done to support the information

provided by the respondents on the questionnaire used. The information and data

gathered by the researcher were analyzed, tabulated and interpreted.

Research Instrument

Likert scale was the type of questionnaire that provided relevant information

about the study since this was the main data gathering instrument used by the

researcher.

The questionnaires consisted of three parts. The first was about the demographic

profile of the respondents in terms of age, sex, civil status, occupation and monthly

income. The second part was about the service quality of car wash in terms of tangible,

reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy it is used the 5 likert scale with

verbal Interpretation of Always, Often Sometimes, Seldom, and Never and the third part

was about the customer satisfaction of car wash in terms of price, service and

cleanliness with the used of 5 likert scale of highly satisfied, satisfied, moderately

satisfied, dissatisfied and highly dissatisfied.

The service quality and customer satisfaction was based on the following:

Scale Range Verbal Interpretation

5 5.00 – 4. 21 Highly satisfied

4 4. 20 – 3. 41 Satisfied
3 3. 40 – 2. 61 Moderately satisfied
2 2. 60 – 1. 81 Dissatisfied
1 1. 80 – 1. 00 Highly dissatisfied
 Scale Range Verbal Interpretation

5 5.00 – 4. 21 Always
4 4. 20 – 3. 41 Often
3 3. 40 – 2. 61 Sometimes
2 2. 60 – 1. 81 Seldom
1 1. 80 – 1. 00 Never

Data Collection and Analysis

In order to answer the questions in this study, the following tools were applied in

collecting of data.

Analysis Statistical Tool

1. Profile of the respondents Frequency, Percentage, Rank

2. Service quality of car wash Mean, Verbal Interpretation, Rank

3. Customer satisfaction of car wash Mean, Verbal Interpretation, Rank

4. Significant relationship between

the demographic profile of respondents Chi square

and service quality of car wash

5.Significant relationship between Chi square

the demographic profile of the

 and the customer satisfaction of car wash

6. Significant relationship between Spearman rho

the service quality of car wash and

customer satisfaction of car was.