Reviews the literature dealing with the nature and characteristics of service and applies it to 30 selected services with the objective of synthesizing a classification scheme to recognize operational similarities between services. This has the purpose of enabling learning by comparison of...

Although quality improvement is being sought, and total quality management is being applied in the service sector, the majority of applications which have been described are in environments similar to manufacturing in some important respects. Some of the cases are, evertheless, concerned with...

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...