Example research essay topic: Service Quality Quality Service - 1,075 words

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QUALITY AND CUSTOMER EXPECTATION; SERVQUAL "This study an service quality and customer expectations from services" aimed to find out the underlying consequences of providing service with customer orientation in the best quality. Companies provide a quality service to customers when they either meet or exceed their expectations. Many companies make the fundamental mistake of assuming that they know what their customers expect and through that lose customers. The researcher has searched and analyzed the literature produced by several well-know authors and researchers to have an overview of the subject. Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (PZB) are the most important persons in the field of service quality analysis. In the following pages you " re going to read about their well-know study called SERVQUAL: In this study service quality is measured by low well the service level delivered matches customer expectations.

PZB developed this SERVQUAL instrument for measuring the gaps between wished and actually delivered service. They developed likert-type scales for testing several factors like; tangibility, reliability, responsive, competence, courtesy, credibility, security, access, communication and understanding the customer. The analysis and more over is explained in the following pages. The researcher developed this study in order to have a framework related to the expectations of Turkish consumer from the service. QUALITY IN SERVICE AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ANALYSIS 'LITERATURE REVIEW' In these days of intense price competition, service marketers often complain of about the difficulty of differentiating their services from those competitors. To the extent that customer view the services of different providers as similar, they care less about the provider than the price.

The solution to price competition is to develop a differentiated offer, delivery and image. Sevice providing companies can differentiate their service by delivering consistently higher quality than its competitors do. Like manufacturers before them, many service industries have now joined the total quality movement. However, defining, measuring and building quality of services is not an easy task. But services in general are characterized by four key characteristics Intangibility, insuperability, variability and parish ability. Each characteristic pose problems.

Marketers work to find out ways to bring up these factors successful while providing the quality. It is more difficult for consumers to evaluate the quality of services than the quality of products because of these distinctive characteristics. Because the actual quality of service can vary from day to day, marketers try to standardize their service in order to provide consistency of quality. Researcher has ben emphasizing on the term quality, but researcher still haven't given the exact definition, actually its not an easy task to define. It has been defined in literature as "consumers' expectations from service. " (Schiffman&Lazar, 1997) The American Society of Quality Control, based on extensive research, defined quality as the "totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. " (Berkowitz, et al. 1994, pp. 266 - 267) This viewpoint that quality should be defined by consumers, not by producers of services, has been shared by others in literature. The reason for this is viewpoint is the recognition that what determines the business success of the firm is the consumer perception of its goods and services (Akan, 1995) Consumers' evaluations of services take place along various dimensions, which are going to be stated in a while.

Delivering quality has a strategic importance in the overall performance of the firm. As consumers increasingly demand better quality, service companies focus attention on high service quality. This calls for greater efficiency and effectiveness for the companies. The conceptualization and measurement of service quality has been an elusive concept primarily because of service intangibility, the problems associated with simultaneous production and receipt of a service, and the difference between mechanistic and humanistic quality. In 1984, Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (PZB) made a substantial factors that influence it by identifying four 'gaps' occuring in organizations that can cause quality problems. These quality problems cause a fifth gap, which is the difference between customer expectations of service and perceptions of the service actually received.

The authors defined this difference as service quality. (Carman, 1990) In the spring 1988 issue of the Journal of Retailing, the same author prepared a 22 -item scale, called SERVQUAL, to measure this fifth gap of perceived quality. (PZB 1988). The 1984 work suggested there were ten dimensions to service quality. The 1988 empirical work operational ized these five dimensions as tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The testing of reliability and validity of the scale with the data from four service firms in different industries was very through. DIMENSION DESCRIPTION Tangibles Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel communication materials Reliability Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately Responsiveness Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service Assurance Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their and their ability to convey trust and confidence Empathy Caring, individualized attention the firm provides its customers SERVQUAL model can be used in tracking the service quality trends, the strength of a particular service firm over its competitors as well as potential areas requiring improvement.

This makes SERVQUAL a valuable tool that the service firm can use in order to gain competitive advantage. The replication of the work done by PZB has demonstrated the instrumentality of SERVQUAL 'across a broad spectrum of services' Carman (1990). In applying the 22 SERVQUAL items to different service settings, namely a dental school patient clinic, a business school placement center, a tire store, an accurate care hospital, Carman maintains that although the Servqual dimensions are stable, they are not completely generic. The wording should be adopted, and if one of the dimensions are very important to customer, it should be broken into sub dimensions.

Also if the service consists of multiple functions, the seperate administration for each function is necessary. It has also been argued that the scale items should be different for different industries. That is high-involvement and low-involvement services would require different definitions of service quality and different scales. (Carman, 1990) The SERVQUAL study has led to many other studies with the same construct. (Carman 1990; Cronin and Taylor 1992; Le Blanc 1992 and Taylor 1995) These articles raised concerns about PZB's specification of service quality as the gap between customers expectations and perceptions. There are others; in another study which conducts consumer's perceptions of service quality of travel agencies, Le Blanc (1992) found corporate image, competitiveness, courtesy, responsiveness accessibility and competence were the factors that explain...

Research essay sample on Service Quality Quality Service