Measuring Quality Serice

Be sure to use APA format, cite sources in-text and reference.  

For this assignment, use this as one source in addition to the articles listed below:

SERVQUAL is a generic tool that measures how customers compare a service against their expectations. You can apply SERVQUAL to various service industries and not only to a specific sector.

The SERVQUAL survey contains 22 perception items and a series ofexpectation items related to the five dimensions described earlier. Respondents complete the survey by:

• Recording their expectations of a company in the same industry from which they received a service.
• Responding about a specific company and the service they received.

You can assess the quality levels by computing the difference between the perceptions of the specific company experience and the expectations of companies within the service industry. When perceptions are lower than expectations a poor quality service rating results. If perceptions are higher than expectations a high quality rating results.

To obtain a better understanding of what SERVQUAL measures and the scales it provides, you can view the survey questions by reviewing the original seminal work done by the authors by going to the Ebscohost database and simply searching for the refereed material in the Journal of Retailing. The 22 items previously mentioned can be found in pages 30-40 of the article:

SERVQUAL is a valuable method to assess customer perception of quality. Some of the other methods that you can use to measure quality are:

• Techniques such as service audits where customers experience every aspect of the service, step-by-step, to determine the quality of the experience
• The LibQUAL tool, which libraries use to assess service quality
• The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) process for measuring customer perception of service quality

Reference:

SUO. (2014). MKT4105:  services marketing:  Week 4:  servqual. Retrieved from http://myeclassonline.com

Measuring Quality Service

Using a hotel brand as an example for this assignment, create a survey to measure service quality. You should use the SERVQUAL measurement scale as a basis for your survey which can be modified for the hotel industry.

Discuss the criticisms of SERVQUAL as a tool to measure service quality. Do you agree or disagree with these criticisms?

Also, discuss the conceptual model of service quality (Figure 12.1 in your textbook) and the various gaps which may exist in between expectations and perceptions of hotel service with management, employees, and customers.

Submit your answers in a four- to five-page Microsoft Word document. Use APA guidelines for your submission. Include a minimum of four peer reviewed articles for your paper.

See the following articles for additional information regarding measuring service quality:

• Lau, P. M., Akbar, A. K., & Fie, D. Y. (2005). Service quality: A study of the luxury hotels in Malaysia. Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, 7(2), 46.
• Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1985). A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research. Journal of Marketing (pre-1986), 49(000004), 41.
• Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1988). Servqual: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. Journal of Retailing, 64(1), 12.
• Parasuraman, A., Berry, L. L., & Zeithaml, V. A. (1991). Refinement and Reassessment of the SERVQUAL Scale. [Article]. Journal of Retailing, 67(4), 420.
• Ramsaran-Fowdar, R. (2007). Developing a service quality questionnaire for the hotel industry in Mauritius. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 13(1), 19.
• Saleh, F., & Ryan, C. (1991). Analysing service quality in the hospitality industry using the SERVQUAL model. Service Industries Journal, 11(3), 324-345.