Total Quality Management in Services: Part 3: Distinguishing Perceptions of Service Quality Available to Purchase

Describes an investigation, in different types of services, of relationships between customers’ perception of service quality, and the importance which customers attach to elements of the service package. The scale for measuring service quality, SERVQUAL, which was discussed in Part 2 of this series, was used to assess both the quality and the importance of each of the dimensions: tangibles, reliability,responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The attributes of service operations (labour intensity, contact, interaction, customization,service recipient and nature of the service), which were defined in Part 1 of this series, were used to classify the sample. The influence of each of these attributes on quality perceptions was also assessed. The investigation was designed to answer two broad questions: the first about the differences in consumers’ quality perceptions between services, and the second dealing with the different relative importance which dimensions of services have in formulation of consumers’perceptions of service quality. The survey analyses support a number of conclusions. Many corroborate the concepts and principles raised in earlier work and which were discussed earlier in this series. Some other tentative conclusions, which have not been expressly stated in other work, provide potential areas for further study and for possible verification.