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The purpose of this study is to explore the dimensional structure of the SERVQUAL scale within non-western service setting as well as the impact of service quality dimensions on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

A quantitative approach was employed, using 32-item, seven-point Likert-scaled questionnaire administered to 384 participants with 55.99 per cent usable response rate. Data were analysed using exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s internal consistency and γ test to, respectively, measure scale suitability, usability and strength/direction of association.

The outcome from the study was the reduction of the 32 items to 26 scale items with 0.929 total α score. Further outcomes show that service quality dimensions are significant predictors of customer satisfaction and loyalty with the commitment dimension accounting for the highest degree of this impact.

Findings failed to corroborate past research as it was established that distinct efforts to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty within non-western service contexts proved to be less useful. However, outcomes cannot be generalized and as such, the modified scale that emerged from this research should receive more rigorous tests in other emerging services contexts.

Automobile repair services firms within Ebonyi State will be better placed in their strategic responses to customer loyalty if they boost customers’ satisfaction through excellent service quality improvement actions.

The best way to enhance the welfare of the consumers of automobile repair services in Ebonyi State is by improving the empathy, tangibles, responsiveness, reliability and commitment dimensions of service quality.

The paper demonstrates that the commitment dimension of service quality emerged as the most significant predictor of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The research also demonstrates that satisfied customers will definitely be loyal because a distinct effort to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty was found to be less useful.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse service quality in the automobile maintenance and repair industry. A conceptual structural model is developed to investigate the impact of service quality, perceived service fairness and convenience on customer service satisfaction. The impact of service satisfaction and brand trust on word of mouth (WOM) is also explored, and the study assesses the mediating effect of customer service satisfaction on the relationship between service quality and WOM.

Data from a questionnaire-based survey of 259 users of automobile maintenance and repair centres were analysed using covariance-based structural equation modelling.

The findings indicate that service quality dimensions (reliability, responsiveness and empathy), perceived service fairness and convenience are positively associated with customer service satisfaction, and that service satisfaction and trust positively influence WOM. The findings support the mediating effect of service satisfaction on the relationship between reliability and responsiveness and WOM.

The study’s main limitation is the cross-sectional design, which limits the generalisability of the findings.

To ensure customer satisfaction and generate trust and WOM, automobile maintenance and repair service centres should improve reliability, responsiveness and empathy, as well as perceived service fairness and convenience.

The study demonstrates that the reliability and responsiveness dimensions of service quality are the most significant predictors of customer service satisfaction in the automobile maintenance and repair industry.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and the loyalty of car owners. The aim is to understand the relative importance of the various service quality dimensions to Ghanaian car owners as to what drive satisfaction and whether this satisfaction has implication on their loyalty.

The study used a survey of car owners and relied on partial least squares-structural equation modeling to study the relationship between service quality and its impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Further moderation analysis based on the number of years of dealing with the mechanic was conducted.

The result indicates empathy, assurance, responsiveness and tangibles have a significant positive relationship with customer satisfactions. However, the reliability of the mechanic has no significant positive relationship with the satisfaction of customers. The results also indicate that customer satisfaction has a direct positive relationship with customer loyalty. The results further indicate that empathy and reliability of the mechanic have a significant positive relationship with customer loyalty; however, the assurance, responsiveness and tangibles have no significant relationship with customer loyalty. The moderation analysis indicated no significant differences in the hypothesis tested and the length of years of customers dealing with the mechanic.

There is the need for mechanics to provide caring and individual attention to car owners, it is also important for mechanics to understand that customers want their cars to be serviced by mechanics who exhibit knowledge and courtesy and also deliver service in a very responsive manner. The appearance of the workshop, equipment and directions are also very important to customers. It is, therefore, important for mechanics do their best to satisfy these customers for them to remain loyal.

The findings indicate the importance of empathy, assurance, responsive and tangibles in mechanic service delivery. It is, therefore, important for mechanics to consistently provide personal attention, attend to customers in a friendly manner, deliver cars after services, provide information to customers when extra repairs are required and should take the time to explain issues to customers. In addition, it is important for mechanics to screen and employ very courteous employees who can tell customers exactly the kind of services needed as well as communicate effectively on the risks of repairs. Prompt services also seem to be the key to the satisfaction of customers.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and builds on the literature in the area of service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty from a developing country’s environment. This is one of the few research works investigating the issue of service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in automobile services using data from the sub-Saharan African environment.

The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework and conduct an empirical study across different service sectors to investigate the inter‐relationships between organizational learning culture, employee job satisfaction and their impact on customer satisfaction. It also aims to examine an individual‐level variable (educational level) to see if it exerts possible moderating effects on the aforementioned relationships.

A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from employees in three companies that belong to different service sectors (port, supermarket and automobile repair service). A sample of 437 usable questionnaires from first line employees was collected. Regression analysis, including a moderated mediation analysis, was used to examine the relationships.

The results confirmed the mediating role of employee job satisfaction on the relationship between organizational learning culture and customer satisfaction. In addition, this study empirically supported the premise that the indirect effect of organizational learning culture on customer satisfaction via employee job satisfaction will be stronger when employee education is at a high level than when employee education is at a lower level.

This study highlights that when the employees are supported by their organization's culture, not only are they provided with new knowledge and skills, but they are also more likely to be satisfied by their jobs. This spurs them to offer high‐quality services that will satisfy their customers' needs.

This purpose of this paper is to investigate the diagnostic abilities and dimensional structure of the SERVQUAL scale within a non-western automotive repair services setting.

Data collected from a randomly generated sample of 555 participants that produced a 50.63 percent response rate was factor analyzed and tested for internal scale consistency. A one sample t-test and a median ranking statistics of component extractions were also conducted.

This study reveals that the SERVQUAL scale is a valid and reliable measure of service quality within the automotive repair services setting in a non-western context. Further outcomes from the assessment show that, even though the original five dimensional SERVQUAL structure was successfully replicated, there were definite differences in items assignment. Empathy also emerged as the most important dimension of service quality.

The outcomes of this study cannot be generalized. As such, the SERVQUAL scale should receive more rigorous research in non-western contexts in two directions. First, the scale should be tested across other services fields to further confirm its diagnostic abilities and dimensional structure. Second, more multi-sectoral as well as cross-cultural studies tested across larger data sets is equally required to enhance generalizability of findings across other non-western environments.

This study demonstrated that the SERVQUAL scale is a valid and reliable measure of service quality within the automotive repair services setting in a non-western context with empathy emerging as the most significant dimension of service quality.

The purpose of this paper is to generate awareness of contributions made by benchmarking toward building performance of Indian service industries in globally market. Ranking of Benchmarking is done on the basis of their application which give confidence for the managers to adopt in their Industries so that they may become best in their field.

Methodology consists of three phase: define, phase include definitions, factors of benchmarking as literature outcomes, questionnaire survey and outcome of survey. In the second phase, analysis of collected data and applications of multi-criteria decision-making approaches [technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and analytical network process (ANP)] are used. The last phase includes comparison of results which gives validation in similarities of ranking obtained.

The study identifies seven different benchmarking techniques used for service industries. Using TOPSIS and ANP approaches shows similarity that external benchmarking, performance benchmarking and internal benchmarking are the first three ranks that give basis for several critical success factors s, namely, planning, reliability, standardization, time behavior, usability, etc., as part of benchmarking using in service industries.

The limitation is the assumptions made by multi-criteria decision-making approaches which may effect the analysis of the study as these are taken theoretically.

This study is a first attempt to find similarities in both techniques while comparing benchmarking in Indian service industries.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a scale for the measurement of service quality at the manufacturer–doctor interface of the pharmaceutical supply chain and to study the impact of service quality on doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior. Doctors from two major states of South India were selected for the study. A doctor perceived service quality scale with three dimensions having eight items was developed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the pharmaceutical context. Structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to show the relationship between service quality, satisfaction and prescribing behavior. The critical factors of service quality were identified, and a model was developed showing the relationship between service quality, doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior which has not been explored in any research. This model will be helpful in further development of new concepts and for analyzing the reasons for the failure of doctors in providing quality service. 

A total of 200 doctors from three major cities of South India were selected. A doctor perceived service quality scale with three dimensions having eight items was developed through CFA using Parasuraman Service quality scale (Parasuraman, 1985, 1986, 1988) as the basis in the pharmaceutical context after focus group discussions with company experts, retailers, doctors and academicians. SEM technique was used to examine the impact of service quality on doctor’s satisfaction and prescribing behavior.

There is no universal set of dimensions and items that determine service quality in manufacturing industries, especially at the manufacturer–doctor interface of the pharmaceutical supply chain though service quality plays a very important role in affecting the performance of manufacturing industries. The critical factors affecting the quality of service for a pharmaceutical company at the manufacturer–doctor interface of the supply chain were identified, and its impact on doctor’s satisfaction and their prescribing behavior were studied.

This research contributes to the development of service quality scale for measuring service quality in pharmaceutical manufacturing company, especially with reference to manufacturer–doctor interface of the supply chain which was not thoroughly explored earlier. A model was developed showing the positive relationship between service quality and doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior in pharmaceutical supply chain which is a new concept not proved experimentally.

The study is very useful for the pharmaceutical manufacturing companies to identify the service quality factors affecting doctor’s satisfaction and their prescribing behavior thereby leading to development of new measures for improving the performance of the pharmaceutical supply chain. This study can lead to identification of problems involved in pharmaceutical supply chain and also leads to generation of new ideas and development of new concepts for influencing doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior which in turn can help in providing better health.

This study actually has a direct impact on the society. If factors affecting doctor’s satisfaction and prescribing behavior are identified automatically, the end consumer, i.e. patient, can be satisfied in a better way, and better medical care can be provided. If doctor’s problems are identified, then better solutions can be provided to patients; this in turn has a lot of positive impact on the pharmaceutical company and society in general.

This research will act as a base for generating ideas relating to how quality service provided by a company will have an impact on doctor’s satisfaction and his prescribing behavior in pharmaceutical supply chain .To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind of the conceptual aspects of service quality, satisfaction and loyalty explained in terms of pharmaceutical supply chain as service quality, doctor’s satisfaction and doctor’s prescribing behavior and proved experimentally.

The objective of this article is to carry out the driving power and dependency analysis of green human resource management (GHRM) indicators of the automotive service sector to identify the most significant ones.

The GHRM indicators were identified through exhaustive literature search and validated through the semi-structured interview with 15 domain experts. The ‘Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (TISM)’ approach was applied for exploring the contextual relationship between the indicators and simultaneously developing their structural hierarchy. The MICMAC analysis was used for categorising the indicators based on their ability to influence the other ones.

In the present study, indicators namely ‘Green organisational culture and adoption of green strategy (C5)’ and ‘Green training and development (C1)’ were found to be the significant ones, whereas ‘Green employee relations and union-management (C10)’ was found to be highly dependent on the rest of the indicators.

The proposed model has been developed in the Indian context and is limited to the automotive sector. However, the same model may apply to other domains of different economies by carrying out slight modifications to the same. Also, the inputs taken from the experts of the case sector could be biased. For the HR professionals, the present study helps to identify the key indicators which need to be considered for enlightening the environmental performance of the service organisation.

This research adds a significant assessment to the current knowledge base by assessing the contextual relationship between the indicators of GHRM as none of the past studies focused on the same by using the TISM method in the Indian service sectors context.

The competitive nature of the hotel industry has given the impetus to practitioners and researchers to invest in Customer Retention strategies and research. Although numerous studies have investigated Customer Retention in the hotel industry, there is still uncertainty regarding Customer Retention in emerging markets. This study, therefore, adds to the existing knowledge by exploring Customer Retention in Ghana, an emerging market. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey of 873 customers of 56 hotels in four regional capitals located in the southern part of Ghana. Findings indicate that service Tangible and Reliability indirectly relates hotel Customer Retention in Ghana, an emerging market.

This paper aims to advance knowledge on the influencers of positive electronic and face-to-face word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviour by examining an interrelationship model of relationship quality (RQ) components and antecedents in the telecommunication service setting.

A survey design was used to generate data from informants and was analysed using the partial least square structural equation modelling technique.

Findings indicate that service quality and relationship value have positive effect on trust and satisfaction, while service communication is positively related to trust but not satisfaction. Both trust and satisfaction have positive effect on face-to-face word-of-mouth (fWOM) and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Additionally, relationship value directly influences fWOM but not eWOM, while service quality did not directly influence either mode of WOM behaviour.

The study was conducted in a single service setting, and thus, outcomes cannot be generalised. Further, the authors limited the study of electronic WOM to only Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter media. As such, caution should be applied in generalising the research findings across contexts.

This paper provides a guide on how telecom service managers can develop and manage their relationship network. Specifically, it demonstrates how business referrals can be generated and harnessed to build customer retention from different relationship building strategies. The study suggests that service providers that deliver quality services, engineer superior value and provide reliable information are better placed to develop resounding relationships with customers and consequently get them to engage in positive referrals.

This study is unique because it investigates the antecedents of WOM from an inter-relational perspective. By simultaneously examining the direct effects of RQ, and its antecedents on both fWOM and eWOM in a single model, the authors illustrate the antecedents and outcomes of RQ in a distinctive way.