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To evaluate the application of one particular quality measurement tool, the SERVQUAL instrument, as a potential mechanism to measure quality in services for children with disabilities

Staff and family of children with an intellectual disability in two organisations providing specialist therapy and day completed an adapted SERVQUAL questionnaire. A total of 81 SERVQUAL questionnaires were distributed and 59 questionnaires were returned (response rate of 73 per cent).

The SERVQUAL instrument can be considered as a useful diagnostic tool to identify particular strengths and areas for improvement in services for people with disabilities as the instrument lends itself for the monitoring of the effectiveness of quality improvement initiatives over time. The findings also showed relatively high customer expectations and the organisations involved in this research are currently not meeting all of these high expectations as significant quality gaps were found in the areas of reliability and responsiveness.

The sample size was relatively small and the measurement of quality using the SERVQUAL instrument remains a challenge, due to the conceptual and empirical difficulties.

The SERVQUAL instrument is probably most be attractive to service managers and funding organisations because of its ability to identify gaps in the quality of the service.

The tool had been used to measure quality in services for people with disabilities and the research has shown that this tool might be an important additional quality measurement tool for services.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an innovative and integrated approach based on service quality measurement (SERVQUAL), quality function deployment (QFD) and failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) for service quality improvement.

The SERVQUAL scale is used for service quality measurement, QFD is used for service design and FMEA is used to prevent possible failures during service delivery.

A case study in a public hospital in Turkey is performed to show how the proposed approach works in practice. The results of the study show that the proposed approach can be used effectively to assess service quality in practice.

Service quality has become an important issue for service enterprises facing a fiercely competitive environment to provide sustainability. This is the first study that applies an integrated methodology based on SERVQUAL scale, QFD and FMEA to service quality improvement.

The need to better understand patient priorities in order to provide higher levels of patient care is an ongoing challenge for managers across the UK NHS. Indeed, the failure of service providers to understand patient priorities can lead to action plans, investment and management decisions which are internally rather than externally focused. This paper seeks to report on the development and evaluation of a tool for measuring the gap between patients’ priorities and their perceptions of an NHS service, and the match between the patient and management perspective.

The tool, an adaptation of the renowned SERVQUAL measurement methodology, is tested in UK NHS breast‐screening unit. The tool is used to measure the perceptions of two different types of patients, as well as those of three different types of staff.

The study suggests that the tool can be used to quantify the gap between patient priorities and their perceptions of health service performance. The tool may also be used to measure staff's perceptions of patient priorities and perceptions, with a view to identifying those functional staff who best understand the patient perspective.

The methodology facilitates the identification of key differences in the expectations and perceptions of different health service market segments, which could have direct implications for service design and delivery at an operational level. Furthermore, it can be applied to identify differences in functional perspectives and thus expose valuable opportunities for intra‐organisational learning.

The scope of this study is to explore and summarize the pool of dimensions, models and measurement techniques of service quality used in healthcare services and to propose a comprehensive conceptual model for practitioners and researchers.

This research employs a comprehensive review of available literature by using multiple keywords on different electronic repositories using the recommendations of the PRISMA approach for the selection of articles. A critical analysis of available studies helped in compiling a list of core service quality dimensions in healthcare services.

This paper presents a comprehensive account of different dimensions and their measurement items used by various researchers to assess service quality in healthcare systems. Most of the researchers have used SERVQUAL model either in its original or modified form while the others have proposed and used totally different dimensions to assess the service quality in healthcare. Many dimensions are just an existing dimension of SERVQUAL that has undergone a name change while others are completely new. The dimensions used by many researchers have items drawn from more than one dimension of SERVQUAL model. The availability of so many dimensions and models adds to the confusion that researchers and practicing managers experience when determining the appropriate model to be used in their work. To mitigate this confusion, there is a need to develop a comprehensive model; the current work is an attempt to meet this need. Through our analysis, we identify four major service quality dimensions: clinical quality, infrastructural quality, relationship and managerial quality and propose a model named CIRMQUAL.

After exploring all available models in the domain of healthcare, this research presents the best possible areas to enhance the quality of healthcare services. It also enhances the research insights for academicians and working professionals by developing and proposing a comprehensive model for measuring healthcare service quality. The proposed model covers almost all of the service quality dimensions used by other researchers and will make the choice of dimensions/model easy for the future researchers/practitioners interested in measuring and improving the quality of services offered by their healthcare units. Such a comprehensive model has not been developed by any researcher thus far.

The purpose of this paper is to follow a paper by Rexfelt and Hiort af Ornäs published in JMTM in 2009, which dealt with consumer acceptance of product service systems (PSS). This topic is important as it is a sustainable business model. It is proposed that the uncertainty consumers have towards the suitability of PSS to their needs can be further explored using existing management tools such as SERVQUAL, a tool to measure customer satisfaction and perceived quality.

This study, supported by the British Academy, utilized qualitative research on two types of respondents: businesses that can be classified eco‐efficient PSS providers; and consumers. The providers were administered structured in‐depth interviews, and the respondents are Mr Chas Ball, Director of Policy at Car Plus, a trade association representing car clubs, and Mr Jonathan Hampson, Director of Streetcar, the largest car club company. Car clubs may be considered a type of eco‐efficient PSS. Consumers were involved in four focus groups (20 participants in total). The questioning route used in the two focus groups focused the attention of the participants on two types of eco‐efficient PSS provision: one represented by car‐sharing services, such as the ones provided by City Car Club and Street Car, mentioned in section 2; the other was an hypothetical provision of a bundle of maternity equipment and services, such as baby prams, baby car seats, travel cots and similar. The inclusion of this “hypothetical” provision was inspired by a study conducted in Sweden by Mont et al.

Consumers are favourable to PSS provisions in principle; however they have concerns on whether this type of provision will live up to their expectations. These concerns are that the PSS might not perform satisfactorily in terms of its assurance, reliability, responsiveness, empathy and tangible components. The attractive aspect of PSS to consumers is as a “bundle” or products and services where the product can be replaced to accommodate consumers' needs. Business managers and policy makers will need to devise communications to reassure consumers that PSS provision meets the requirements set out by the SERVQUAL scale.

This paper identifies the applicability of a service quality measurement tool, SERVQUAL, to product service systems (PSS) and it extends the knowledge on consumers' acceptance of PSS.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study based around a commercial facilities management (FM) service provider's creation of an internal benchmark of how services for an acute hospital perform in terms of service quality.

The paper presents findings of a hard and soft FM application of the widely‐recognised SERVQUAL performance assessment tool; including its use and usefulness in a healthcare FM context. The paper proceeds to a conceptual discussion on emergent issues. It offers a questioning framework which the authors identify requires further study and debate but raises potentially profound issues for FM. Further replication‐related and conceptual development research is underway.

Principally, the paper discusses the emergence and significance of the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance within the datasets for the private finance initiative hospital case study. The paper also briefly discusses the scope for using the service consumers' zone of tolerance as a management datum.

The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of cognitive dissonance, which we believe poses radical and hitherto‐unaddressed questions about the appropriateness of some core aspects of POE, satisfaction measurement used in FM contract management, and the wider FM performance management paradigm. This appears to open a whole new perspective for soft FM and FM service integrators.

The paper challenges the conventions and major assumptions of the FM service quality assessment paradigm. It suggests cross disciplinary implications for the FM research field, and is relevant to suppliers, clients, facilities managers, service consumers, and customers, including procurement manager. Overall, the paper raises a lot of questions about the FM service quality management paradigm(s) and assumption(s).

The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of a study to examine the perception of academic staff on the quality of academic library services. It also attempts to assess the impact of library services on their work and their perceived level of satisfaction towards university library services.

The study was carried out using a survey methodology. The survey instrument was a questionnaire adopted from a quality impact survey based on SERVQUAL dimensions.

Results reveal that academic staff perceive the quality of library services to be just above average. Library staff are considered quite helpful and able to instill confidence in library users. Academic staff also believe that the library has a positive impact on their teaching, learning and research. The overall satisfaction with the library services received a satisfactory rating.

The study is limited to the University of Malaya Library and its branch libraries, thus generalization to other academic libraries is premature at this stage.

This paper will be helpful to libraries to improve library services, especially in assisting academic staff in teaching and research. Though the quality of library service is perceived as just above average, academics will continue to use the library resources and be dependent on librarians for their information needs.

Measuring service quality is a marketing trend that is gradually proving its worth in library and information science. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on service quality measures in academic libraries.

Deals with three issues in the area of perceived service quality. First, it compares the gap model with the performance model. Second, it investigates the direction of causality between service quality and satisfaction. Finally, it examines whether the influences of some dimensions of service quality vary across service industry types. Three service firms were selected and respondents were interviewed in each firm. As hypothesized, the performance model appeared to be superior to the gap model. In addition, the result shows that perceived service quality is an antecedent of satisfaction, rather than vice versa. Finally, tangibles appeared to be a more important factor in the facility/equipment‐based industries, whereas responsiveness is a more important factor in the people‐based industries. Managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.

The main aim of this paper is to report on an examination of the service quality of Dhaka University Library (DUL), a premier public university library in Bangladesh, from its users' viewpoint.

A survey was conducted among faculty, graduate and undergraduate students of DUL using a modified version of SERVQUAL. The gap differences between users' expected and perceived services were calculated. The concept of zone of tolerance was applied to see which items of service quality equal, exceed or fall short of user perception. The study analysed the desired service expectations of the users. Finally, the dimensions of service quality were determined through exploratory factor analysis.

The results of the study showed that DUL services are lagging far behind what is expected by its users. The result of the zone of tolerance showed that most of the items of service quality are not within the range of tolerance. A number of users' desired expectations for service quality are identified. The results obtained through exploratory factor analysis suggest that university library service quality consists of four dimensions – i.e. affect of service (organisational), collection and access, library as a place, and affect of service (personal) – which are different from SERVQUAL's original dimensions.

This is the first time an effort has been made to measure the service quality of a university library in Bangladesh. It is hoped that this study will trigger more research on assessing service quality in various university libraries in Bangladesh.

The phenomenon of traffic crash under-reporting has been extensively documented in terms of its extent, but not equally analysed in terms of its reasons. As police distrust has been recently identified as a major reason for crash under-reporting, the purpose of this paper is to look at the police service quality for handling the reporting of traffic crashes.

This study introduces a novel approach to evaluate service quality that combines multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) with latent class analysis (LCA). Moreover, this study presents the design of a web-based survey on the basis of the SERVQUAL approach to detecting strengths, opportunities and threats with crash reporting to the police at a strategic level. Transportation stakeholders (e.g. researchers, authorities, consultants, NGO representatives, suppliers) with an interest in traffic safety in Denmark participated in the survey that yielded 86 complete responses.

The novel approach was successfully applied and its implementation demonstrated the usefulness of the tool even in countries with a high police service. Results showed that the participating stakeholders perceived human factors as more important than physical factors in order to increase the crash reporting, with responsiveness as the most important and tangibles as the least important dimensions. Nevertheless, most stakeholders viewed a mixture of human and physical factors as crucial to increase crash reporting rates.

This study advances the knowledge about police service quality with a novel expert-based decision support tool based on SERVQUAL, MCDA and LCA, demonstrates its applicability in countries with a high-police service, and opportunities and barriers for increasing the crash reporting rate.