Volume 64 Number 1 Spring 1988

Executive Summaries
This section provides a concise, nontechnical summary of each article in
the current issue ofJR, focusing particularly on its strategic implications
for management.

SERVQUAL: A Multiple-Item Scale for Measuring

Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality
A. PARASURAMAN, VALARIE A . ZETTHAML, AND LEONARD L . BERRY

Quality of service is becoming an increasingly important differentiator

between competing businesses in the retailing sector. In today's fiercely
competitive marketplace, characterized by similarly priced, look-alike
product offerings from a variety of retailing firms, clear winners will be
the ones that provide excellent service quality. The paper describes the
development and potential applications of a multiple-item instrument—
called SERVQUAL—for measuring customer perceptions of service
quality.
Unlike goods quality, which can be measured objectively by such indi-
cators as durability and number of defects, service quality is an elusive
construct that may be difficult to measure. However, an extensive explor-
atory research project we conducted yielded a conceptual definition of
service quality. Specifically, our research revealed that service quality as
perceived by customers stems from a comparison of their expectations or
desires from the service provider with their perceptions of the actual ser-
vice performance. Our research also showed that the criteria used by
customers in assessing service quality fit 10 dimensions: tangibles, reli-
ability, responsiveness, communication, credibility, security, compe-
tence, courtesy, understanding/knowing the customer, and access. These
findings from our exploratory research served as the foundation for devel-
oping the SERVQUAL instrument.
The^, scale development process began with the generation of a large
pool of items representing various facets of the 10 service quality dimen-
sions. Each item was then recast into two statements—one to measure
expectations about firms in general within a service category being inves-
tigated and the other to measure perceptions about the particular firm
whose service quality was being assessed. The initial instrument was re-
fined, condensed, and validated through several stages of data collection
and analysis. Data for testing and refining the instrument were obtained
from customers spread across five different service categories—appliance

Journal of Retailing 5
Journal of Retailing

repair and maintenance, retail banking, long-distance telephone, securities

brokerage, and credit cards. Extensive statistical analysis of data from five
different samples of respondents yielded a highly reliable and valid instru-
ment (SERVQUAL) containing 22 items. We grouped the items in
SERVQUAL into the following five distinct dimensions:

Tangibles: Physical facilities, equipment, and appearance of per-

sonnel
Reliability: Ability to perform the promised service dependably
and accurately
Responsiveness: Willingness to help customers and provide prompt
service
Assurance: Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their
ability to inspire trust and confidence
Empathy: Caring, individualized attention the firm provides its
customers

The last two dimensions (Assurance and Empathy) contain items repre-
senting seven original dimensions—communication, credibility, security,
competence, courtesy, understanding/knowing customers, and access—
that did not remain distinct after the several scale refinement stages.
The SERVQUAL instrument is designed for use in a broad set of ser-
vice businesses and provides a basic skeleton through its expectations/per-
ceptions format, encompassing statements for each of the five dimensions.
This skeleton, when necessary, can be adapted and supplemented to fit the
needs of a particular organization. SERVQUAL has a variety of potential
applications. For instance, it can be used periodically to track customer
perceptions of service quality of a retailing firm relative to that of its com-
petitors. The five-dimensional format of SERVQUAL allows a firm to
assess its level of service quality along each dimension, as well as overall.
The instrument can also be used to categorize a firm's customers into
several perceived quality segments (e.g., high, medium, low) on the basis
of their individual SERVQUAL scores. These segments can then be com-
pared and contrasted on characteristics such as demographic and psycho-
graphic variables so as to gain managerial insights. Yet another applica-
tion of SERVQUAL is its use by multi-unit retail companies to track the
level of service provided by individual stores and to group the stores into
several clusters with varying quality images. An evaluation of store char-
acteristics in the different clusters may reveal attributes that are critical for
ensuring high service quality.