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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the existence of differences in service quality assessments across distinct retail store formats. We address customers’ quality assessments for physical aspects, personal interactions, reliability and policies dimensions in hypermarkets and supermarkets to analyse the impacts for satisfaction and loyalty.

The study builds on previous scales for service retail quality to develop a survey addressing customers of hypermarkets and supermarkets in Portugal. Data analysis addressed 248 complete questionnaires and involved statistical testing to explore differences in service quality expectations across retail store formats. The regression analysis was used to estimate impacts of each service quality dimension for customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions.

The results support the existence of differences in customers’ service quality assessments across retail store formats, notably for the expectations about different quality dimensions. Differences were also observed on the impacts for customer satisfaction and loyalty, in particular for the dimensions of reliability and personal interaction.

The results suggest that managerial decisions regarding service in stores should be adjusted to the characteristics of each retail format. The generalizability of the results should be assessed by means of further investigation in other retail contexts.

Retail customers patronize multiple types of retail stores that compete on diverse service attributes. Building on existing service measurement scales, this paper provides a contribution to understand customer’s quality assessments across distinct store types to inform retail quality and service differentiation strategies.

CASPE Research and Brighton Health Authority have been working together to test a series of approaches to quality assurance in healthcare. In this paper, they give an account of the results of the quality assurance techniques used; discuss the key requirements for successful quality assurance in the NHS environment; and consider the need for systematic evaluation of quality assurance programmes.

The purpose of this paper is the presentation of a new method for blog quality assessment. The method uses the temporal sequence of link creation events between blogs as an implicit source for the collective tacit knowledge of blog authors about blog quality.

The blog data are processed by the novel method for the assessment of blog quality. The results are compared to Google Page Rank with respect to the Gold Standard, the BlogRazzi Bookmark Rank.

The method is similar or better than Google Page Rank with respect to the chosen Gold Standard.

The major contribution of this paper is the introduction of a novel method for blog quality assessment. Even though its superiority to other and more established methods cannot be proven in the context of this limited study, it enriches the toolset available for blog quality assessment and may become important for a deeper understanding of organizational learning.

The inadequacy of regulations, the uncertainty of the quality of houses produced and the needs of users all highlight the need for a house analysis in Turkey. The goal of this study is to understand housing quality in Turkey based on the gap between expectations and existing housing stock, to identify the main housing expectations and the problematic issues in the current housing situation.

The authors designed a survey using the quality indicators of several well-known housing quality assessment tools to reveal residents' housing preferences and current housing situation in Turkey. The authors analyzed the survey results to identify the gap between housing preferences and existing conditions to reveal the housing quality of Turkish housing.

Overall results show that residents in Turkey, regardless of their demographics, want and need better houses. It was determined that physical conditions, safety, aesthetics and accessibility are the issues for which the expectations of the participants are high and the lack of which is most felt.

This paper reveals the residents' perspective on housing and their housing quality. It emphasizes the need for more research on housing quality, the need for updated regulation and necessity of a housing quality assessment tool in Turkey.

Identifies the relationship between price and the consumer's evaluation of product quality with regard to developing a pricing strategy. Assesses the effects of price changes, and investigates the influence of advertising on perceived product quality.

The present paper's purpose is to review the literature related to quality assessment and performance evaluation in academic libraries, whether empirical or theoretical, and to extract key issues. It aims to explore which criteria exert a significant relationship with the academic libraries' performance quality; identify a set of criteria that appears to be useful for assessing the quality of academic libraries ITBS; and use these criteria to develop an instrument or evaluation checklist for evaluating the quality of academic libraries ITBS.

Related keywords such as “academic libraries research”, “academic libraries evaluation”, “academic libraries assessment” were searched on the web as well as some leading databases. In addition, available library resources as well as online book databases were consulted. Key issues were identified, categorized and discussed to develop the evaluation checklist suggested by the paper.

A number of indicators have been developed and tested in quality assessment studies debated in the paper. The literature reveals that evaluating ITBS in academic libraries should be considered to a greater extent and thus, more evaluation studies on the basis of validated tools are needed.

The review does not claim to be comprehensive.

The paper can serve as a research roadmap concerning quality assessment of ITBS in academic libraries for researchers, managers, academic authorities and users.

Nowadays, the higher education institutions (HEIs) of Thailand are affiliated by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation and other relevant Ministries which connects the state-of-the-art technology/facilities to all academic programmes at HEIs. Thailand has been successful in the growth in access to higher education across the country, but there are many specific requirements to improve the accountability of higher education system in the nation across many decades. This paper provides an introduction of holistic information about Thailand’s higher education system. It then describes an overall picture of developing and managing the quality assurance (QA) of Thai higher education. It also points to the details of criteria, processes, and systems which were adopted into the model of QA such as higher education standards, accreditation process of curriculum, Thailand Qualifications Framework, as well as provides the linkage between national education act, policy and standards, QA, feedback for continuous improvement as the key component of QA in the educational system. Finally, the paper presents the challenges and opportunities in the rapid change of the twenty-first century and globalisation as the main points and crucial factors requiring Thai HEIs to continue improving their quality effectively.

This article updates a more substantial article published in Library Review in 1999. The earlier article describes an LIS school based in the University of Bristol. The school runs an MSc in Information and Library Management which is unique in the UK as it is taught by practising LIS professionals. The present article reports on recent quality assessment of the MSc by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. This quality assessment awarded the course the highest possible marks and the article explains why the course received such a strong endorsement.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a service quality assessment model for academic libraries using SERVQUAL and validate the model surveying teachers, students and researchers.

A model was developed, including 28 statements of five dimensions using the SERVQUAL instrument. It incorporated three segments, i.e. minimum service expectation, desired service expectation and actual service performance with a seven-point Likert scale. The minimum service expectation and desired service expectation appear at both ends of the tolerance zone, which represents the range of satisfactory service performance. A performance level upper tolerance zone could delight users, or service performance below the tolerance zone would cause dissatisfaction. A survey was conducted among 552 respondents from ten private university libraries of Bangladesh to validate the model.

Several statistical methods like Cronbach’s alpha (0.986), Bartlett’s test (0.001), rotation sums of squared loadings (74.26) in factor analysis, item loading (0.671‐0.839), commonalities (0.579‐0.859), Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value (0.971), construct reliability (0.862‐0.910) and AVE value (0.510‐0.660) supported reliability and validity of the model. The actual service performance of all dimensions existed within the tolerance zone of the respective dimensions. Besides, the overall service performance (5.11) resided within the tolerance zone (4.73‐5.84), indicating the users were satisfied with the service provided by their libraries.

The model was developed in the current context of university libraries, which produced appropriate results. It will prompt further research on service quality assessment in academic libraries globally.

Two simple models are developed to identify the customer of higher education (HE), as the customer′s requirements are key to total quality management. One is based on a product analogy and the other on a service analogy, but they are inadequate as each identifies a different customer. A more comprehensive model is proposed using a systems approach which identifies 12 stakeholders who contribute to, or benefit from, HE. The quality assessment (QA) procedure for HE in the UK is summarised. The paper concludes that the stakeholder’s interests are not fully addressed by the current QA procedure.