Chapter 2: Approaches to Conceptualising and Measuring Quality

This chapter investigates how quality has been conceptualised and measured from the quality management, services marketing and geographical perspectives. It discusses major theoretical contributions within each field as well as the merits and limitations of each perspective, especially with regard to each perspective's stance on what quality is and how to measure it. This chapter also compares the three perspectives and notes the major similarities and differences in quality conceptualisation and measurement.

It is important to review literature within these domains for several reasons. Firstly, conceptualising and measuring quality originates from the quality management field (Umble, 2000). Although this perspective has been widely applied in a range of industries, it has received less attention within tourism. Consequently, a review of quality management literature is essential to gaining knowledge about core quality definitions and dimensions and to understanding why these may or may not be applicable to tourism destination quality. Secondly, although literature on quality management has not been used extensively in tourism studies, it is the services marketing literature that has mainly informed the debates and studies on various aspects of tourism quality. Therefore, a review of the services marketing approaches to conceptualising and measuring quality is also essential to understanding the origins of quality attributes, dimensions and measures widely used in examining quality of individual tourism services. Thirdly, conceptualisation and measurement of quality within both the quality management and services marketing fields mainly concerns organisations as units of analysis. Given that tourism destinations are places where tourist activities occur, it is essential to consider how quality of place has been conceptualised and measured in geographical literature.