Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Services Marketing: Service Quality
Services Marketing: Service Quality
Services
Marketing
Service Quality
Tom Chapman
www.marketing101.co.uk
Twitter @idlehans
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Introduction
Evaluating Quality
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What do you think?
Define Quality
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Defining Quality
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Service Quality - early writings
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Why is Quality Important?
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Changing management focus
1970s Productivity
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Service Quality - shifting focus
in
the past, industry focused particularly on
defining and meeting internal quality or
technical standards
today the focus has shifted to quantifying
customers assessments of services and
products (external measurement) and then
translating these into specific internal
standards
delivering quality service is fundamental to
corporate success because research shows it is
closely linked to profits
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Service Quality
a major business concern
Quality is an elusive concept not easily articulated by
consumers
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Service Quality profits/costs
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Enhancing service value
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What is Quality?
Conformance quality
producing the product/service according to
specification every time, with no correction required
Quality-in-use
customer judgements about quality received and
resultant level of customer satisfaction
Technological quality
superior performance features of product/service
derived from advanced new technologies
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Service Quality
Total quality
Image (corporate/local)
Technical Relational
quality of the Functional quality: by
outcome: WHAT quality of the WHOM is the
offered/receive process: HOW service
d delivered
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Evaluating Quality
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Evaluating Quality
care (concern, consideration, sympathy and patience shown
to customer, including putting at ease and feeling emotionally
comfortable)
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Evaluating Quality
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Evaluating Quality
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Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry
tangibles tangibles
reliability reliability*
responsiveness responsiveness*
competence
courtesy
credibility assurance
security
access
communication
empathy
understanding the
customer
little
known about what determines
expectations and how formed
Individualistic
own norms, values, wishes, needs
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Expectations
expectations
can be formulated in terms of what
should be done and what will be done
fourdifferent performance standards
distinguished:
deserved or equitable performance
ideal or desirable performance
expected performance
minimal tolerable performance
the
difference between the desired service level
and adequate service level is the
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Perceptions
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Satisfiers and Dissatisfiers
critical incidents
courtesy
Behaviour
understanding
Responsiveness
communication
negative experiences
competence
reliability
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Satisfiers and Dissatisfiers
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Customer Perceptions of Quality
Critical incidents
events throughout service delivery impact on perceived quality
Evaluation
customers check whether their expectations are in line with actual
experiences of the service
Satisfaction
actual service meets or exceeds expectations (positive disconfirmation)
Dissatisfaction
actual service is below expected level (negative disconfirmation)
Gap analysis
looking for gaps between expectations and perceptions is important in
guiding quality improvement
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Dimensions of Service Quality
Reliability
ability to perform the promised service dependably
and accurately delivering what is promised
Responsiveness
willingness to help customers and provide prompt
service
adapting the service to customer needs
Assurance
employees knowledge and courtesy
ability to inspire trust and confidence
Empathy
caring, individualised
attention
customers are unique and special
customers are understood and valued
Tangibles
appearance of physical facilities, equipment,
personnel and communication materials
continuity
perceived quality
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(Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1988)
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Gaps Model of Service Quality
Word of Mouth
Personal Needs Past Experience
Communications
Expected Service
Customer
Gap
Perceived Service
Customer
Company
Service Delivery External Communications
to Customers
Gap 1 Gap 4
Gap 3
Gap 2
Company Perceptions of
Consumer Expectations
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Service Quality Gaps
External
Service Delivery Communications
to Customers
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Service Quality - attributes
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perceptions statements
attributes were put as statements, with which customers were
asked to express the degree of agreement/disagreement on
a 7 point scale
expectations statements:
e.g. the physical facilities at hotels should be visually
appealing
the behaviour of hotel employees should instil confidence
in customers
hotels should give customers individual attention
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SERVQUAL construction
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SERVQUAL five dimensions
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+ Service Quality - SERVQUAL
refinements
(2) empathy (caring, individualised attention the firm
provides its customers) represents access, communication
and understanding the customers
SERVQUAL is most valuable when it is used periodically to
track service quality trends, and when it is used in
conjunction with other forms of service quality
measurement (PZB, 1988:31)
In 1991 PBZ further refined SERVQUAL:
three types of services and 5 companies
data collected through mail surveys of independent samples
of customers of each company, giving combined sample size
of 1,936
the distribution of expectations ratings obtained was highly
skewed toward the upper end of the 7 point scale
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SERVQUAL refinements
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SERVQUAL usage
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SERVQUAL usage
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SERVQUAL concerns
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SERVQUAL concerns
is it necessary to measure expectations? - studies show
scores on the perceptions-only component of SERVQUAL
explain significantly more variance in customers overall
evaluations of a cos SQ (measured on a single item
overall perceptions rating scale) than are perception-
expectation difference scores. PZB argue that measuring
expectations has diagnostic value (i.e. pinpoints SQ
shortfalls)
how should the expectations construct be
operationalised? multiple ways the term expectations
can be interpreted - SQ researchers have generally
viewed expectations as normative standards (customer
beliefs about what a service provider should offer) but
customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction researchers have
typically considered expectations to be predictive
standards (what customers feel a service provider will
offer)
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SERVQUAL operationalisation
but both should and will expectations have been used in
measuring SQ although ZBP in 1993 went on to develop a
conceptual model of expectations
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further SERVQUAL criticisms
(see Buttle 1996)
SERVQUAL is based on a disconfirmation paradigm rather
than an attitudinal paradigm
little evidence that customers assess SQ in terms of P-E gaps
process orientation rather than service encounter outcomes
SERVQUALs five dimensions are universals with high
intercorrelation between 5 RATER dimensions (reliability,
assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness)
dont consumers use standards other than expectations to
evaluate SQ? and yet it fails to measure absolute SQ
expectations
4 or 5 items cannot capture the variability within each SQ
dimension
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Further considerations
customer assessments of SQ may vary from moment of truth to
moment of truth
argued that PZB are inductive, and take no account of the literature
in economics, psychology and statistics
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Dynamics
interdependencies among the dimensions of quality are
difficult to describe
also is the customer value of improvements a linear or non-
linear function?
SERVQUAL fails to capture the dynamics of changing
expectations (customers learn from experiences) indeed,
Gronroos (1993) says we need to know more about how
expectations are formed and change over time
from the customers viewpoint, failure to meet expectations
often is more significant than success in meeting or
exceeding expectations
while process of service delivery focused, its argued that
outcome quality is already contained within reliability,
competence and security
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Service Quality - other models
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Performance specification
forecasted performance (customers may respond
by using the scale to predict the performance they
would expect)
ideal performance (the optimal performance, what
performance can be)
deserved performance (the performance level
customers feel performance should be)
equitable performance (the level of performance
customers feel they ought to receive given a
perceived set of costs)
minimum tolerable performance (what
performance must be)
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Standards
Lacobucci et al (1994) would drop the word expectations
and prefer the word standards; they believe several
standards may operate simultaneously, among them ideals,
industry standards etc.
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Attitudes
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Evaluation
are analytical context markers (such as tangibility and consumer
involvement)useful in advancing SQ theory?
what are the relationships between the five RATER factors? How
stable are these relationships across contexts?
what is the most appropriate scale format for collecting valid and
reliable SQ data? and to what extent can customers correctly
classify items into their a priori dimensions?
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SERVQUAL additions
ZBP (1993) conceptual model of expectations - customers
have 2 different service levels that serve as comparison
standards in assessing SQ:
Desired Service (a level of service representing a blend of
what customers believe can be and should be
provided
Adequate Service (the minimum level of service customers
are willing to accept)
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SERVQUAL additions
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Diagnostic value
tests have shown that measuring perceptions alone should
suffice if the sole purpose of SQ measurement on individual
attributes is to try to maximise the explained variance in overall
service ratings but
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Measuring Service Quality
SERVQUAL:
One scale measuring customer expectations about
service companies in general within the relevant
service sector
One scale measuring customer perceptions about a
particular company
Based on five dimensions of service quality
Compare expectation scores with perceived quality
achieved
Used for internal performance management,
benchmarking versus competitors, customer
segmentation, tracking expectations/perceptions
over time
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Measuring Service Quality
SERVQUAL criticisms:
Doubts over conceptual foundation & methodology
Only measures technical (outcome) & functional (process)
service quality
Results not re-producible over time (lacks stability)
Risks in assessing customer satisfaction relative to prior
expectations (if expectations low, even poor service might
seem good)
Only valid for services with high search or experience
characteristics problems with credence characteristics
better to use questions about performance (= perception)
only (Cronin and Taylor, 1992 and 1994 - SERVPERF) - higher
predictive validity
Measuring expectations has only diagnostic value
(pinpointing service quality shortfalls)
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