Measurement of quality in Saudi Arabian service industry

Quality problems in the service organization are the result of the mismatch between prior expectation and perceived quality of the service. Each organization will attempt to determine the requirements of its customers and translate these requirements into product and delivery process specifications. This paper examines a particular electric company (SCECO‐East), a typical service provider in Saudi Arabia, in which service quality is a distinguishing feature of primary importance. It describes a detailed survey and analysis in the light of the model put forward by Parasuraman et al. It utilizes SERVQUAL for measuring customers’ perceptions of service quality. The study revealed that SCECO‐East scored high in tangibles dimension but low in features of responsiveness and reliability. In addition, while the performance of SCECO‐East was acceptable to all customer categories, service quality was perceived differently by various types of customers, with reinforcement and commercial customers awarding SCECO‐East even lower ratings than other customers did.