SERVQUAL

SERVQUAL is a multi-dimensional research instrument, designed to capture consumer expectations and perceptions of a service along the five dimensions that are believed to represent service quality. SERVQUAL is built on the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm, which in simple terms means that service quality is understood as the extent to which consumers' pre-consumption expectations of quality are confirmed or disconfirmed by their actual perceptions of the service experience. When the SERVQUAL questionnaire was first published in 1985 by a team of academic researchers, A. Parasuraman, Valarie Zeithaml and Leonard L. Berry to measure quality in the service sector, it represented a breakthrough in the measurement methods used for service quality research. The diagnostic value of the instrument is supported by the model of service quality which forms the conceptual framework for the development of the scale (i.e. instrument or questionnaire). The instrument has been widely applied in a variety of contexts and cultural settings and found to be relatively robust. It has become the dominant measurement scale in the area of service quality. In spite of the long-standing interest in SERVQUAL and its myriad of context-specific applications, it has attracted some criticism from researchers.The Knowledge GapThe standards Gap The Delivery GapThe Communications Gap SERVQUAL is a multi-dimensional research instrument, designed to capture consumer expectations and perceptions of a service along the five dimensions that are believed to represent service quality. SERVQUAL is built on the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm, which in simple terms means that service quality is understood as the extent to which consumers' pre-consumption expectations of quality are confirmed or disconfirmed by their actual perceptions of the service experience. When the SERVQUAL questionnaire was first published in 1985 by a team of academic researchers, A. Parasuraman, Valarie Zeithaml and Leonard L. Berry to measure quality in the service sector, it represented a breakthrough in the measurement methods used for service quality research. The diagnostic value of the instrument is supported by the model of service quality which forms the conceptual framework for the development of the scale (i.e. instrument or questionnaire). The instrument has been widely applied in a variety of contexts and cultural settings and found to be relatively robust. It has become the dominant measurement scale in the area of service quality. In spite of the long-standing interest in SERVQUAL and its myriad of context-specific applications, it has attracted some criticism from researchers. SERVQUAL is a multidimensional research instrument. designed to measure service quality by capturing respondents’ expectations and perceptions along the five dimensions of service quality. The questionnaire consists of matched pairs of items; 22 expectation items and 22 perceptions items, organised into five dimensions which are believed to align with the consumer's mental map of service quality dimensions. Both the expectations component and the perceptions component of the questionnaire consist a total of 22 items, comprising 4 items to capture tangibles, 5 items to capture reliability, 4 items for responsiveness, 4 items for assurance and 5 items to capture empathy. The questionnaire is designed to be administered in a face-to-face interview and requires a moderate to large size sample for statistical reliability. In practice, it is customary to add additional items such as the respondent's demographics, prior experience with the brand or category and behavioural intentions (intention to revisit/ repurchase, loyalty intentions and propensity to give word-of-mouth referrals). Thus, the final questionnaire may consist of 60+ items and typically takes at least one hour, per respondent, to administer. The length of the questionnaire combined with sample size requirements contribute to substantial costs in administration and data analysis. The instrument which was developed over a five-year period; was tested, pre-tested and refined before appearing in its final form. The instrument's developers, Parasuman, Ziethaml and Berry, claim that it is a highly reliable and valid instrument. Certainly, it has been widely used and adapted in service quality research for numerous industries and various geographic regions. In application, many researchers are forced to make minor modifications to the instrument as necessary for context-specific applications. Some researchers label their revised instruments with innovative titles such as EDUQUAL (educational context), HEALTHQUAL (hospital context) and ARTSQUAL (art museum). The SERVQUAL questionnaire has been described as 'the most popular standardized questionnaire to measure service quality.' It is widely used by service firms, most often in conjunction with other measures of service quality and customer satisfaction. The SERVQUAL instrument was developed as part of a broader conceptualisation of how customers understand service quality. This conceptualisation is known as the model of service quality or more popularly as the gaps model. The model of service quality, popularly known as the gaps model was developed by a group of American authors, A. Parasuraman, Valarie A. Zeithaml and Len Berry, in a systematic research program carried out between 1983 and 1988. The model identifies the principal dimensions (or components) of service quality; proposes a scale for measuring service quality (SERVQUAL) and suggests possible causes of service quality problems. The model's developers originally identified ten dimensions of service quality, but after testing and retesting, some of the dimensions were found to be autocorrelated and the total number of dimensions was reduced to five, namely - reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness. These five dimensions are thought to represent the dimensions of service quality across a range of industries and settings. Among students of marketing, the mnemonic, RATER, an acronym formed from the first letter of each of the five dimensions is often used as an aid to recall. Businesses use the SERVQUAL instrument (i.e. questionnaire) to measure potential service quality problems and the model of service quality to help diagnose possible causes of the problem. The model of service quality is built on the expectancy-confirmation paradigm which suggests that consumers perceive quality in terms of their perceptions of how well a given service delivery meets their expectations of that delivery. Thus, service quality can be conceptualised as a simple equation: SQ = P- E When customer expectations are greater than their perceptions of received delivery, service quality is deemed low. When perceptions exceed expectations then service quality is high. The model of service quality identifies five gaps that may cause customers to experience poor service quality. In this model, gap 5 is the service quality gap and is the only gap that can be directly measured. In other words, the SERVQUAL instrument was specifically designed to capture gap 5. In contrast, Gaps 1-4 cannot be measured, but have diagnostic value. The development of the model of service quality involved a systematic research undertaking which began in 1983, and after various refinements, resulted in the publication of the SERVQUAL instrument in 1988. The model's developers began with an exhaustive literature search in order to identify items that were believed to impact on perceived service quality. This initial search identified some 100 items which were used in the first rounds of consumer testing. Preliminary data analysis, using a data reduction technique known as factor analysis (also known as principal components analysis) revealed that these items loaded onto ten dimensions (or components) of service quality. The initial ten dimensions that were believed to represent service quality were: