Purpose: This study examined the influence of service quality on satisfaction and investigated whether satisfaction varies between male and female in response to the perceived service quality in the Malaysian tourism context. Design/methodology:The population of the study was tourists travelling to Malaysia. A sample was drawn using a multi-stage sampling method and 301 completed questionnaires were analysed with the structural equation modelling. Findings:The findings showed that service quality was positively associated to satisfaction and the relationship was found to be moderated by gender. Additionally, the findings also showed that service quality perceived by women was found to influence the satisfaction level greater than that of men in the tourism context. Research limitations/implications:Other demographic variables such as age, culture, education level, and income must also be considered in future study and when developing marketing strategies.Practical implications: Gender differences are significant moderator between service quality and satisfaction in tourism context. Tourism service providers who target on women's market -444-Intangible Capital -http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/ic.673 are recommended to allocate more resources and attention on important aspects namely, reliability, considerability and empathy, and tangibility aspects in order to increase the satisfaction level among female tourists. Originality/value:The findings validated what previous studies found by examining the moderator role of gender in the relationship between service quality and satisfaction in the Malaysian context.

The ways to maintain and increase customer satisfaction are always the concern of business providers because high satisfaction is closely related to the customers’ positive word of mouth, revisit intentions, and loyalty; which are the key for the success of long term businesses in today’s customer-focused industry. For that reason, more satisfaction studies, especially on the elements that contribute to higher satisfaction level are needed. Previous researches discovered several explanatory predictors to satisfaction. Nevertheless, in this study, only two variables, i.e. service quality and value were chosen as the antecedent variables associated to satisfaction among international tourists in the context of Malaysian tourism. This study further focused on examining whether service quality has an indirect impact on satisfaction through value, i.e. the mediator effect. The relationships proposed were analysed with structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis using the data gathered from 301 international tourists that have travelled to Malaysia. The findings indicated that both service quality and value are the significant predictors that influence tourist satisfaction. Additionally, the results also indicated that value plays a mediator role in the service quality-satisfaction relationship in the tourism context. Keywords: Satisfaction; Value; Service Quality; Tourist.

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