Consumer expectations of services and their effect on perceived service quality

Much of the research that falls under the umbrella of "services research" has been concerned with perceived service quality. Researchers who try to explain and predict perceived service quality view consumer expectations of services as an important construct in the perceived quality formation process. Expectations have been conceptually defined in a manner which seems to indicate that expectations act as reference points for the evaluation of perceived performance in the evaluation of service quality. There is also evidence which indicates that services' marketing practitioners also believe expectations are reference points. However, the two dominant paradigms of perceived service quality offer an oversimplified view of the role of expectations. This dissertation empirically investigates expectations and their role, as reference points, in the perceived service quality formation process. It furthers the current state of knowledge about consumer expectations of services in two ways. First, the operationalization of the expectations construct is expanded to three levels in the present study. Regression analysis is used to demonstrate that the three level operationalization is superior, in terms of its ability to predict perceived quality, than a one or two level operationalization. Second, it is shown that expectations, because of their roles as reference points, have a significant and complex impact on service quality evaluations. Third, a new operationalization of perceived service quality, the evaluative operationalization, is offered by the present dissertation. It is shown that the evaluative operationalization overcomes the major shortcomings of the current operationalizations of perceived service quality.