Service Quality Measurement: Issues and Perspectives

Book excerpt: This book is very useful for it is not just ‘descriptive’ in its nature, but ‘prescriptive’, too. It is descriptive in the sense that it describes the process of developing or using a metric in a problem situation, and prescriptive as it clearly prescribes how a beginner can put the theory into practice. In this globalized economy, maintaining quality of products and services has been the thrust area of interest among academicians and practitioners. Today, there are quite a good number of books and research articles available. Nevertheless, service quality measurement has always posed problems, particularly in the context of service industries due to the difficulty in the measurement of the intangibles and implied needs of the customers. The research literature is filled with articles on how to quantify the services, and there are several streams of arguments on the choice of the most ideal approach. However, the research gap lies in the answer to the question: ‘Do these measurement instruments concur in their measurement outcomes or do they give different results in the same situation?’ This book primarily makes an attempt to answer this question through a case study approach. Even though, there are several instruments for the measurement of service quality, the two most widely used instruments are SERVQUAL and SERVPERF metrics. Comprehensively, this book explains the systematic procedure of using both, the instruments in a service sector, and further, the procedure for conducting a statistical analysis so that one will be able to apply the same in any service sector. It then takes the reader through a series of tests in order to compare the two metrics, and to prove statistically if there is the same outcome in a problem situation. The results are sure to surprise the reader, and trigger the “research bent of mind” to undertake a similar study of such metrics and gain mastery over performing an independent research with very minimal guidance from a professional guide. To conclude, this book is sure to provide adequate inputs for a service quality researcher, and answer various questions wriggling in the mind of a beginner of service quality research such as: How shall I start with service quality measurement? How to collect data? How to select a sample? How to conduct a literature review? How to analyse the data? What research methodology is applicable? How to build hypothesis on my research? How to use statistical procedures? How to present the [...]