Monitoring Service Gaps in Hong Kong Apparel Merchandising Business Part III: An Antecedents Study of Organizational Service Quality Incongruence

Hong Kong’s apparel merchandising have long been regarded as a kind of buying professions that logistically support the international retail store buyers to develop, source and distribute brand-specific textile and apparel products in the highly dynamic global marketplaces. Its service is much characterized by the high level of buy-sell interaction, uncertainty in work nature and the sense of professional autonomy. Organizational monitoring of quality of such service provision is not so easily and explicitly specified and implemented. In this paper, we presented a case study, in which the potential organizational antecedents underlying the service quality incongruence were analyzed in a Hong Kong-based Australian apparel merchandising office. Through the case study, the sixteen quality gap antecedents and their sizes of impact could integratively and diagnostically be related to the service quality gaps that existed across the levels of merchandising office. The research results provided insights for today’s management of quality-conscious apparel merchandising service.