SERVICES MARKETING
SUMMARY OF ALL PAPERS
,MEASURING SERVICE QUALITY: A REEXAMINATION AND EXTENSION
By J. Joseph Cronin, Jr. & Steven A. Taylor
Service industries ae playing an increasingly important role in the overall economy of the US and other
countries in the world. There is high interest in the measurement of service quality and the delivery of
higher levels of service quality is the strategy that is increasingly being offered as a key to service
providers' efforts to position themselves more effectively in the marketplace. However, service quality
is an abstract construct that is difficult to define and measure.
This paper has two objectives. First, to show that the current conceptualization and operationalization
of service quality (SERVQUAL) is inadequate. Second, to examine the relationships between service
quality, consumer satisfaction and purchase intentions.
Why? Because managers of service providers need to know how to measure service quality, what
aspects of a particular service best define its quality, and whether consumers actually purchase from
firms that have the highest level of perceived service quality or from those with which they are most
"satisfied."
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Service quality has been described as a form of attitude, related to satisfaction, that results from the
comparison of expectations with performance. The difference between service quality and satisfaction
is that perceived service quality is a form of attitude, a long-run overall evaluation, whereas
satisfaction is a transaction-specific. Also, in measuring perceived service quality the level of
comparison is what a consumer should expect, whereas in measures of satisfaction the appropriate
comparison is what a consumer would expect.
The distinction is important to managers and researchers because service providers need to know
whether their objective should be to have consumers who are "satisfied" with their performance or to
deliver the maximum level of "perceived service quality”.
Initially Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985, 1988) proposed that higher levels of perceived
service quality result in increased consumer satisfaction, but more recent evidence suggests that
satisfaction is an antecedent of service quality.
Implications From the Satisfaction and Attitude Literatures
Attitude is a function of expectations and subsequently a function of the prior attitude toward and the
present level of satisfaction with a product or service. Purchase intentions (PI) then are considered
initially to be a function of an individual's attitude toward a product or service.
Consumers form an attitude about a service provider on the basis of their prior expectations about the
performance of the firm, and this attitude affects their intentions to purchase from that organization.
This attitude then is modified by the level of (dis)satisfaction experienced by the consumer during
subsequent encounters with the firm. The revised attitude becomes the relevant input for
determining a consumer's current purchase intentions.
Service quality and consumer satisfaction are distinct constructs, but are related in that satisfaction
mediates the effect of prior-period perceptions of service quality to cause a revised service quality
perception to be formed.
Research suggest using only performance perceptions as a measure of service quality.
,The conclusion of the satisfaction and attitude literatures appears to be that (1) perceived service
quality is best conceptualized as an attitude, (2) the "adequacy-importance" model is the most
effective "attitude-based" operationalization of service quality, and (3) current performance
adequately captures consumers' perceptions of the service quality offered by a specific service
provider.
In addition to the theoretical support for performance-based measures of service quality, practitioners
often measure the determinants of overall satisfaction/perceived quality by having customers simply
assess the performance of the company's business processes. Furthermore, the performance-based
approach may actually be more in line with an antecedent/consequent conceptualization: that is,
judgments of service quality and satisfaction appear to follow the evaluation of a service provider's
performance.
We now examine these conclusions empirically by testing a performance-based measure of service
quality (SERVPERF) as an alternative to the current disconfirmation-based SERVQUAL scale.
OPERATIONALIZING SERVICE QUALITY
The current measurement of perceived service quality can be traced to the research of Parasuraman,
Zeithaml, and Berry. These authors originally identified 10 determinants of service quality based on a
series of focus group sessions (1985). They subsequently developed SERVQUAL (1988), which recasts
the 10 determinants into five specific components: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance,
and empathy. They analyzed 22 performance items that adequately define the domain of service
quality.
The objectives of this study are to examine whether SERVPERF, a performance-only based measure, is
a better measure of service quality than SERVQUAL and to examine the relationships between service
quality, consumer satisfaction, and purchase intention.
To examine this, the following propositions were formed:
P1: An unweighted performance-based measure of service quality (unweighted SERVPERF) is a more
appropriate basis for measuring service quality than SERVQUAL, weighted SERVQUAL, or weighted
SERVPERF.
P2: Customer satisfaction is an antecedent of perceived service quality.
P3: Consumer satisfaction has a significant impact on purchase intentions.
P4: Perceived service quality has a significant impact on purchase intentions
Data were gathered from personal interviews. Responses were gathered on the service quality offered
by two firms in each of four industries: banking, pest control, dry cleaning, and fast food.
For research questions explanations, methods, the sample, measures and results zie paper.
Some terms of validity:
▪ Construct validity is concerned with the extent to which a particular measure relates to other
measures consistent with theoretically derived hypotheses concerning the concepts (or
constructs) that are being measured. Can be measured through measuring convergent and
discriminant validity.
▪ Convergent validity involves the extent to which a measure correlates highly with other measures
designed to measure the same construct. → correlation matrix of items
, ▪ Discriminant validity involves the extent to which a measure is novel and does not simply reflect
some other variable. Assessing discriminant validity is possible by determining whether the
correlation between two different measures of the same variable is higher than the correlation
between the measure of that variable and those of any other variable.
RESULTS
P1 suggests that the unweighted SERVPERF scale should capture more of the variation in service
quality than any of the other identified alternatives (SERVQUAL, weighted SERVQUAL, and weighted
SERVPERF). The regression analysis affirms P1. In all of the four service industries examined,
unweighted SERVPERF explains more of the variation in the global measure of service quality.
The analysis suggests that (1) service quality has a significant (p < .05) effect on consumer satisfaction
in all four samples, (2) consumer satisfaction has a significant (p < .05) effect on purchase intentions in
all four samples, and (3) service quality does not have a significant (p < .05) impact on purchase
intentions in any of the four samples. Thus, P2 and P3 both receive strong support from the results.
The analysis of P4 afforded no support for the proposed effect.
DISCUSSION
How should service quality be conceptualized and measured?
Service quality should be conceptualized and measured as an attitude. The literature clearly supports
the performance-only (SERVPERF) approach. The SERVQUAL conceptualization used before is flawed
according to the test results. Evidence supports the use of performance-based measures of service.
What is the causal order of the relationship between service quality and consumer satisfaction?
The analysis of the research model provides empirical support for the notion that perceived service
quality leads to satisfaction.
What impacts do service quality and consumer satisfaction have on purchase intentions?
The analysis suggests that satisfaction has a significant effect on purchase intentions in all four
samples whereas service quality does not. So satisfaction appears to have a stronger and more
consistent effect on purchase intentions than does service quality.
CONCLUSION
The major conclusion is that marketing’s current conceptualization and measurement of service
quality with SERVQUAL is flawed. Service quality should be measured as an attitude with a
performance based scale, SERVPERF.
The results suggest that service quality is an antecedent of consumer satisfaction and that consumer
satisfaction exerts a stronger influence on purchase intentions than does service quality. Thus,
managers need to emphasize total customer satisfaction programs over strategies centering solely on
service quality.
Also, the scale items that define service quality in one industry may be different in another. Managers
and researchers therefore must consider the individual dimensions of service quality when making
cross-sectional comparisons.
