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The purpose of this paper is to assess the expectation and perception of the users of a library of reputed special academic institute in India on quality of library services. The paper is an effort to identify a service gap within five SERVQUAL dimensions rated by the library users.

The study was conducted through a survey methodology. The survey was implemented through a questionnaire based on five SERVQUAL dimensions. The data were collected by using 22 attributes of SERVQUAL for user expectations and perceptions of special academic institute library, and the gap score between expectation and perception of users was calculated. Based on the expectation mean score and gap score of each attributes, the researchers have identified the service shortfall in five SERVQUAL dimensions.

The result of the study indicates that there is an overall service quality (SQ) gap in services provided by institute library. However, the library is providing relatively satisfactory services to the faculty, but it needs to enhance up to the expectation level of its services to their registered participants. From the study, the average expectation score is very high and it indicates that users expect more from the institute library, particularly in Reliability and Tangibles dimensions. Out of the total 22 SERVQUAL attributes, the result reflects that 10 SERVQUAL attributes have high expectation and high service gap.

This paper will assist libraries to improve their library services, particularly in special academic training libraries. Determining SQ has been originated from marketing discipline that has progressively shown its value in the discipline of library and information science profession. This study contributes to the emergent body associated with SQ measures in libraries. Expectation-service gap chart and expectation-service gap grid are the major contribution and rarely found in SERVQUAL literature.

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.

Educational institutions must delight their customers and provide quality of services so as to be competitive and achieve a leading position. The paper aims to present the results of an empirical study conducted on students of select management institutes in India with a focus on their orientation as a customer to the quality paradigm. The study is an attempt towards the integration of multiple methodologies so as to be able to identify customer requirements and evaluate service quality; prioritize improvement of service; and guide and develop educational services by incorporating the voice of the customer.

The study was conducted across three phases. In the first phase, service quality was determined through the application of the SERVQUAL; in the second phase, the Kano model was applied; and, in the final phase, the QFD was applied. This paper, which forms the first part, is restricted to the application and findings of the first phase of the study, namely identification of customer requirements and the evaluation of service quality. The second part in the series is aimed at the establishment of prioritization for improvement of service design of an educational system through incorporation of the voice of the customer and the generalization of results.

The study helped identify customer requirements, measure performance and evaluate service quality through the SERVQUAL and gap analysis.

The paper can be useful to policy makers, educational planners and administrators in developing a system that could lead to customer satisfaction and delight.

The integration of the multiple tools and their application to the field of management education in India has not yet been made available in the literature. The integration of such methodologies and the comprehension of the findings and relationships could enable policy makers, educational planners and administrators to assess performance and guide improvement efforts, with resultant customer satisfaction and delight.

The purpose of this paper is to understand and compare the level of patient’s expectations of healthcare services and their perceived performance. The paper also provides insights into the specific service factors and quality of hospital services which are required to meet the needs of Indian patients.

A total of 210 exit interviews were conducted using a structured questionnaire addressing the probable factors of quality related to healthcare services in a five-point Likert scale. The survey was conducted among the patients recently discharged and about to be discharged from private hospitals of Delhi and NC. A set of questionnaires is administered to collect responses on expected and perceived service qualities.

The paper reviews and discusses the importance of service quality for Indian patients using the SERVQUAL gap model as the measure of service quality. The results gave an overview of the perspectives of Indian patients on the quality of service in private hospitals. Patients indicated best satisfaction in some dimensions of services, namely, the tangible dimension of “hospitals provide ample parking spaces,” empathy dimension of “Doctors are never too busy to respond to my request”, assurance dimension of “I can depend on Doctor/Nurse,” and in the responsiveness dimension of “employees always communicate truly” on hospital matters.

The first limitation is in the scope of sample, that is research findings are limited to Delhi. The second limitation is that the research should have been done in two parts, that is by contacting the patient before they take the services and after the service encounter. Third limitation – for a better understanding, the analysis should have been performed on the gap between the patient’s perception and the perception of the medical service provider about the customer’s perception.

This research would be beneficial to healthcare organizations to do their best to achieve greater patient satisfaction. The findings of the paper that, for all dimensions, the patient’s perception is always higher than the expectation suggests that in the Indian healthcare segment, there is a need of dissemination of information regarding the most modern medical facilities.

This current research is concluded with the suitability of a model that can be used to find the levels of patient satisfaction for healthcare services. The present study is based on primary data and offers a systematic procedure that could form the cornerstone for providing further insights into the conceptual and empirical comprehension of patients perceived service quality and its constituents. The current emergency medicine patient’s service dilemmas are a complex interaction of patients and physician factors specifically targeting efficiency and patient satisfaction. The awareness of these issues particular to the emergency patient can help to maximize efficiency, minimize subsequent medico-legal risk and improve patient care if a tailored management plan is formulated.

Consumer behavior, in the context of general insurance, is worth exploring to formulate growth strategies for insurance sector in India in light of the proposed structural changes. Indian consumers attract global players due to untapped potential and favorable policy measures initiated for higher foreign direct investments. The purpose of this paper is to understand the prevailing level of service quality as perceived by insurance customers in India in the presence of certain contextual antecedents and moderators.

Perceptions about constructs like customer risk dispositions, awareness, past experiences, customer involvement, choice overload, service quality and satisfaction of 256 customers were collected using a questionnaire survey. A variance-based structural equation modeling helped to identify significant linkages among the constructs.

In order to assess service quality levels, a 15-item scale having the infrastructure, employees, agents and product dimensions was found valid and reliable. Choice overload and customer involvement were found to moderate the influence of antecedents and service quality, respectively. The influence of choice overload on quality perceptions is insignificant. The study concludes that the existing risk beliefs are insufficient, and experiences have less predictive contribution to quality perceptions.

Theoretically, this study examined the process of satisfaction development from service quality perceptions. This study offers insights for developing theories to portray future consumer behavior where more dependence of self-service technologies is expected to dominate service delivery mechanisms in insurance. The study informs that general insurance customers in India prefer more diversified products, more customer-centric employees/agents and better technical quality.

The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the prevailing insurance consumer behavior in the general insurance sector of India and help insurance service providers in streamlining their strategies for better insurance penetration and reduced lapse rate.

This study helps in understanding the emerging trends in general insurance buying behavior in India.

The objective of the research is to understand Indian consumers' definition of retail service quality with respect to small retailers and influence of hedonic and utilitarian shopping values in determining their expectations towards small retail service quality.

Data were collected through a small retail store‐intercept technique in four cities of Northern India (n=386).

The results indicate that small retail service quality for Indian consumers comprises ambience, layout, and service/relationships dimensions. Hedonic and utilitarian shopping values influence consumers' service quality evaluations.

The study did not consider demographic variables like income, education, and occupation as factors that might affect consumers' perceptions towards retail service quality.

The findings can help small retailers in improving their service quality by focusing on Indian consumers' hedonic and utilitarian shopping values. The research helps small retailers to combat the competitive pressures of organized retailing in the Indian retail landscape.

There has been limited research on understanding consumers' perceptions towards retail service quality in the Indian setting. Further, there is no research to examine Indian consumers' perceptions towards small retailers' quality attributes.

Service quality is becoming more critical for banks to maintain their market shares. This paper develops a modified SERVQUAL for measuring service quality in the United Arab Emirates commercial banks. The instrument includes thirty items that belong to the five dimensions of SERVQUAL. The developed instrument was tested for reliability and validity and the results indicated that the instrument had only three dimensions. This paper also investigates the difference in significance between the instrument's dimensions. This is supposed to help managers focus their attention on the service quality dimension that matters most to customers.

The concerns of service quality may differ from one country to another. It is therefore crucial to develop measures of service quality that are pertinent to the country and culture where the service is offered. This paper proposes developing a measure of service quality in the UAE and then testing this measure in UAE conventional and Islamic banks.

The components of service quality were developed through a brainstorming and sorting exercise. Based on the results of this exercise, the authors developed a 30‐item questionnaire comprising the five dimensions of SERVQUAL and two other dimensions called values and image. The questionnaire was distributed to customers of UAE conventional and Islamic banks in Dubai and Sharjah. Factor analysis of the responses resulted in four dimensions. The reliability and predictive validity of these dimensions were confirmed. Finally separate regression models were developed for conventional and Islamic banks. These models were analyzed and compared.

Factor analysis resulted in four dimensions: personal skills, reliability, values, and image. Results of regression analysis revealed that all four dimensions were significant in determining service quality in conventional banks. Values and image were however the most important of these dimensions. On the other hand, only personal skill and values were significant in determining service quality in Islamic banks.

This paper emphasizes the need to customize measures of service quality to different countries. This is particularly important for multi‐national corporations. This paper also provides guidelines for bank managers in the UAE on which dimensions of service quality they should emphasize in order to retain their customers and attract new ones. This paper has important research implications on the relationship between national culture and service quality and on the service quality of Islamic banks.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the service quality (SQ) of property managers of shopping complexes in Ibadan with a view to improving management practice.

Primary data were used for the study through questionnaire administration. Ibadan was stratified into five axes using existing major roads where shopping complexes were highly concentrated. From each axis, 33, 65, 48, 64 and 66 shopping complexes were identified (Oyo State Ministry of Land, Housing and Survey, 2017), and the systematic sampling technique (20 percent) was adopted to select 57 out of 276 shopping complexes and 192 (10 percent) out of 1919 occupiers of the shopping complexes in the study area. In total, 157 occupiers responded to the questionnaire, and the data were analyzed using mean ranking and stepwise multiple regression.

This study found that professionalism, tangible, assurance and empathy dimensions of SQ were rated fair, whereas reliability and responsiveness dimensions were rated poor. Also, stepwise multiple regression analysis predicted 78.5 percent overall SQ of property managers, and assurance, professionalism and empathy dimensions contributed significantly to the overall SQ. Hence, reliability and responsiveness dimensions of SQ need to be improved. It is expected that the findings of this study will help property managers to understand the role of various dimensions of SQ for enhanced property management practice.

The study is one of the few studies that assessed the SQ of property managers of shopping complex with a view to improving its management practice.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between outpatient satisfaction and the five constructs of healthcare projects’ service quality in Pakistan using Deng’s grey incidence analysis (GIA) model, absolute degree GIA model (ADGIA), a novel second synthetic degree GIA (SSDGIA) model and two approaches of decision-making under uncertainty.

The study proposes a new synthetic GIA model and demonstrates its feasibility on data (N=221) collected from both public and private sector healthcare projects of Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan, using a self-administered questionnaire developed using the original SERVQUAL approach.

The results of decision analysis approach indicated that outpatients’ satisfaction from the private sector healthcare projects is higher as compared to the public healthcare projects’. The results from the proposed model revealed that tangibility and reliability play an important role in shaping the patient satisfaction in the public and private sectors, respectively.

The study is pioneer in evaluating a healthcare system’s service quality using grey system theory. The study proposes the SSDGIA model as a novel method to evaluate parameters comprehensively based on their mutual association (given by absolute degree of grey incidence) and inter-dependencies (given by Deng’s degree of grey incidence), and tests the new model in the given scenario. The study is novel in terms of its analysis of data and modelling. The study also proposes a comprehensive structure of the healthcare delivery system of Pakistan.