Attitudes to service quality – the expectation gap

Abstract

In the competitive environment in which hospitality businesses exist, the quality of service is a vital mechanism used to achieve a competitive advantage. Quality is a difficult construct to quantify however the ability to measure quality is key to assessing whether or not the industry provides the service consumers desire. Consumers hold the key to business survival and success. The aim of this study was to investigate how closely consumer expectations of service, and manager and staff perceptions of consumer expectations matched. The SERVQUAL model was used to identify those dimensions of service deemed to be important in assessing service quality. The results show that there is a gap between managers’ perceptions of consumers’ expectations and actual consumers’ expectations. The main implication for the hospitality industry is for managers to develop strategies which will meet consumers’ expectations of service quality.

Quality Gap of Family Health Care Services in Kashan Health Centers: An Iranian Viewpoint

“…This may be because of their expectations having been met to a large extent in this dimension. Our finding in this section is parallel to a number of works [24,25,28] whereas is not consistent with some other studies [9,[18][19][20]. As a part of effective provision of quality services it is necessary to be aware of customer expectations.…”

“…As a part of effective provision of quality services it is necessary to be aware of customer expectations. This is also essential for survival in a competitive environment [9]. In general, women's expectations were not met in the health centers.…”

“…Since then, service quality has been receiving a good deal importance due to its clear correlation to costs [2], financial performance [3,4], consumer satisfaction [5,6], loyalty and customer retention [7,8]. It is hard to quantify service quality, however measuring quality of service, as a prerequisite to advance service quality and to attain customer loyalty and satisfaction, is necessary [9]. By customary means of measuring quality of goods, service quality could neither be conceptualized nor assessed because services are intangible, heterogeneous and inseparable [10].…”

The Effect of Service Quality Dimensions on Customers’ Loyalty through Customer Satisfaction in Jordanian Islamic Bank

“…At that time, manifested centrifugal relation among quality of customer services, performance improvement and organizational competitiveness have been studied. This relation clearly showed that the improvement of customer services will lead in its turn to an improvement in the performance and competitiveness (Douglas & Connor, 2003;Rosen, Karwan, & Scribner, 2003). Certain standards and indicators of customer satisfaction and service quality are used by service units' administrators to value customers' needs by the institution.…”

Service Quality from Customer Perception: Evidence from Carter Model on Bank Islam Brunei Darussalam (BIBD)

“…The present study assumes service quality perception as desires and needs of customers as it will allow discovering exactly what service providers should offer based on customer past experience and interaction (Douglas and Connor, 2003). Negi, (2009) suggested that, it is mandatory for organizations to understand, measure and evaluate customer's perceptions and expectations for the identification of significant gaps in service delivery to ensure customer satisfaction.…”