Not‐for‐profit organizations are faced with several problems in providing services to consumers. In order to attract sufficient funds, they must respond to consumer needs and competitive forces. This requires identifying which aspects of service provision are valued most. However, services...

The intangibility of services presents a number of problems for the measurement of quality and customer satisfaction. Proposes a simple index which can be applied to ordinal or cardinal data and will provide a convenient aggregate summary of the extent to which a product or service meets...

Prior studies of how service quality evolves during the service delivery process have used aggregate case data in retrospect or have not obtained objective measures of the actual dimensions of the service encounter on an individual basis. Reports on a study of an actual hotel service delivery...

Generally it is assumed that quality improvements are important tools for companies to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. The result of product quality improvements depends, for example on the reaction of competitors. If competitors react intensively and quickly, the outcome of a product...

Since its launch in 1985, SERVQUAL has become a widely adopted technology for measuring and managing service quality. Recently, a number of theoretical and operational concerns have been raised concerning SERVQUAL. Reviews these concerns and proposes a research agenda.

States that providing quality customer service is increasingly regarded as an important basis for establishing and maintaining solid and long‐term relationships between manufacturers and distributors in marketing channels. Discusses the results of a research project which was undertaken to...

Presents the current state of the methodological discussion on the measurement of perceived service quality. Describes two approaches ‐ attribute‐based methods and the sequential incident technique (SIT). Outlines the concept and basic assumptions of SIT describes an empirical SIT study...

Looks at the importance of the service sector to national economies with interest for practitioners and academics. Posits that management has to determine what actions it needs to undertake to ensure it delivers service quality.

A large number of service corporations are configured with headquarters that determine the major principles of operation (services, pricing, marketing and advertising) and regional salesforces that are responsible for acquiring new customers and catering to the needs of existing customers. This...

Suggests that, despite hundreds of publications on consumer satisfaction and service quality, little work has been done to clarify the conceptual basis of these constructs; theorists in the area of service quality argue that the popular press does not differentiate between these two constructs....