Search results

Purpose: We examined whether the five-service quality dimensions described by SERVQUAL (SQ) and SERVPERF (SP) are consistent with perceived dimensions of management accounting (MA) service quality and we compared responses from users and providers.

Design/methodology/approach: We surveyed experienced providers and users of MA services to learn their perceptions and expectations of accounting service quality using SQ/SP adapted to an MA context. We used principal components analysis (PCA) to investigate service quality dimensions.

Findings: Participant responses identified three dimensions of MA service quality. There was a high degree of correspondence in dimensions of service quality between users and providers, but with notable differences in service priorities. A performance-only (SP) approach seems to provide a better measure of overall service quality than performance minus expectations (SQ).

Research limitations/implications: Participants self-selected to participate. Respondents were not matched by organization. The SQ/SP instrument may not capture important organization specific attributes. Our approach may serve as a guide for future studies of accounting service quality.

Practical implications: SP may be more useful to managers who wish to evaluate overall service quality. SQ may be more useful to identify specific gaps between user perceptions and expectations. SQ/SP assessments may help to improve the quality of MA service delivery and provider-user communications.

Originality/value: This is the first empirical study to our knowledge that reports on MA service quality dimensions using both the SQ and SP instruments. This study investigated perceptions and expectations of MA service users and providers. Our sample is a cross-section of experienced professionals.

The research aims to qualitatively explore e-marketplace service quality (EMSQ) from the perspective of an industrial buyer as a sole decision-maker. It further intends to quantitatively examine its impact on the industrial buyer's perceived value (PV), overall satisfaction (SAT), and e-loyalty (ELOY) in the context of business-to-government (B2G) e-commerce.

The research used an exploratory sequential mixed-method design. A qualitative exploratory study of EMSQ was conducted using a Straussian grounded theory (GT) technique, followed by an explanatory quantitative study using PLS-SEM to evaluate causal links between various research variables.

In the area of e-services, the investigation found that the hierarchical structure of EMSQ encompasses six broadly applicable dimensions and one B2G context-specific dimension of the e-governance process quality. The study also reinforced previous research findings in the B2C and B2B e-commerce domains, highlighting that e-service quality positively impacts online buyer's PV, SAT and ELOY.

This research contributed to the area of e-service operations by developing and validating the EMSQ model in the B2G e-commerce settings. Further, it has opened up new research avenues in B2G e-commerce.

The findings from this research highlighted that e-service operations managers should focus on usability, technological concerns, product/vendor quality concerns, customer support reliability, along with effective e-governance, ordering and logistics processes for e-business success. It also provides policymakers with guidelines for making B2G e-marketplaces sustainable.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study employing the GT and PLS-SEM techniques to explore EMSQ from the viewpoint of industrial buyers in B2G e-commerce. The study contributed to prior literature by proposing and validating the hierarchical EMSQ model.

The purpose of this paper is to promote and analytically verify an advanced assessment design to evaluate service quality (SQ) especially in postgraduate higher education.

This research adopts a quantitative approach through a survey method. A structured questionnaire was designed as a means for collecting data. Data were collected from 182 postgraduate students in an Egyptian higher education university. Data were examined by exploratory factor analysis to pinpoint the main irregularities explained by the extracted factors. Then, confirmatory factor analysis was carried out to filter the ratios and empirically test the assessment efficiency of the developed model.

The final model consists of 33 items loaded into eight dimensions for measuring performance-based SQ of the postgraduate higher education. The results are satisfactory in terms of unidimensionality, trustworthiness, and validity tests.

Although the empirical results are significant, a comparative study can identify relative strengths and weaknesses of this model.

For improving postgraduate higher education institutions’ quality, this paper highlights some dimensions and attributes that should be considered.

The literature proposes that there is an opportunity to handle SQ from the point of view of postgraduate students covering different contexts to further build a more comprehensive structure specifically for postgraduate higher education SQ. This paper deals with this research gap with analytical confirmation within the context of postgraduate programs in an Egyptian university.

The purpose of this study is to propose a conceptual model for identifying the factors of e-service quality (e-SQ) and for investigating the impact of team identification, e-SQ and satisfaction on behavioural intention to revisit sports websites. The proposed conceptual framework includes five service quality factors of sports websites (usability, privacy, reliability, information, appearance). Based on the previous literature in the areas of e-SQ and team identification, this study attempts to develop a model to better understand the relationships between each construct. The Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) results with a convenience sample of 409 college students reveal that team identification has a positive and significant effect on e-SQ, satisfaction and revisitation. In addition, satisfaction is found to be a mediator between e-SQ and revisitation.

This study aims to investigate the effect of communication effectiveness (CE) on service quality (SQ) leading to relationship quality (RQ) in IT service relationships.

CE was decomposed into frequency, bi-directionality and quality of communication while SQ was decomposed into functional and technical qualities, and RQ into trust and relationship commitment. An empirical study is conducted testing the nomological research model consists of these dimensions, using survey method collecting data from 144 subjects.

The findings indicate that good SQ can impact relationship commitment only via the clients' trust, but not directly. Influence of functional quality is stronger on trust but technical quality also maintains significant impact. Detailed findings imply that, while communication is important element influencing perceptions of SQ, quality of bi-directional communication is more critical than simple but frequent communication.

This study explores the direct impact of CE on SQ leading to RQ in IT service context. Previous studies rarely tested the impacts of functional and technical SQ, simultaneously. Findings of this study add values to research on service relations as well as IT services research in terms of differentiating functional and technical service qualities.

Service quality (SQ) has become an essential and indispensable component in healthcare and many other industries. SQ can deliver guaranteed stakeholder value and consequent consumer delight in the healthcare sector. The purpose of this study is to identify the relationships of various SERVQUAL elements with respect to the SQ of surgical instrument suppliers among surgeons.

Data were collected from a sample of 112 surgeons working in the USA using the “snowball sampling” technique. A few standardised questionnaires, including SERQUAL, were used to collect the data. R-programming was used to perform structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis on the collected data.

The research study identified that service delivery factors and the SQ of surgical instruments contribute significantly towards medical practitioner sensitivity in the US healthcare industry. Word of mouth (WOM) did not have any significant impact on the medical practitioners' sensitivity.

A review of related literature revealed that studies that examine the surgeon's perspectives of SQ are scarce. Thus, the present study is directed towards this gap in literature. The findings of the study are significant in nature and have made a substantial contribution to management literature.

We describe the development of a new scale designed to measure service quality perceptions of retail bank customers. Empirical studies were performed in two waves. First, qualitative research was undertaken in the form of seven focus groups and 39 one‐to‐one interviews. These produced 963 text items that described customers’ service quality perceptions. These were categorised against the technical and functional service quality schema proposed by Grönroos. Then, a three‐phase, four‐sample, quantitative study was undertaken to derive a quantitative measure of technical and functional service quality. We have developed and validated a new 21‐item scale comprising four dimensions: service system quality, behavioural service quality, service transactional accuracy, and machine service quality. We found that customers evaluate SQ at two levels: organisational and transactional. The parsimony, reliability and validity of the scale suggest this is a measure of high utility to the banking industry.

In the wake of fierce competition that has ensued among banks to get a share of the depositors' funds after the banking sector reforms in 2017, this study attempts to investigate bank service quality and its influence on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana.

Using a sample of 753 respondents (bank customers), the study employs the structural equation modelling (SEM) using Smart-PLS to test the nature of relationships between service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty using the SERVQUAL model.

The findings show that, with the exception of assurance, the remaining four antecedents of service quality, namely reliability, responsiveness, empathy and tangibility had significant positive influence on customer satisfaction. The results also show a significant positive influence of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty, implying that more satisfied customers in Ghana tend to become more loyal to their banks.

For policy purposes, the authors recommend that banks should invest in improving service quality to drive customer satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately firm performance. The satisfied customer is a reliable source of bank viability and survival.

To the best of the knowledge of the authors, this is the first time a study on bank service quality has been done involving the management of banks in Ghana. This ensures the reliability of results. The findings of this study enhance knowledge of the positive relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty using a modified SERVQUAL model.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the quality of services provided by local authorities (LA) to the public. An FM‐SERVQUAL instrument was developed to meet an appropriate measurement of such services.

The development of FM‐SERVQUAL based on integrated facility management (FM) framework. It involved measurements of 40 elements of human capital components, property, technology and ICT, and working processes of Johor Bahru City Council which is one of the major cities in Malaysia. Primarily, two phases of data collection were carried out, of which 100 and 191 respondents were involved during the first and second phases, respectively.

The study revealed that, five elements in technology and ICT and six elements of property which were identified below the service quality (SQ) level. On the other hand, 29 elements of other services were achieved with minimum quality level.

The LA executives recognized FM‐SERVQUAL, as it is very useful to measure the service delivery performance of their organization. Consequently, the elements which are below SQ level can be easily identified.

An FM‐SERVQUAL instrument set under the integrated FM framework was developed through an empirical basis. It is an efficient and effective instrument with a capability to measure the quality of services the delivery system. FM‐SERVQUAL also serves as an essential gauge in policy formulation and future planning of an organization.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize hospital service quality (SQ) into its component dimensions from the perspectives of patients and their attendants; and to analyze the relationship between SQ and customer satisfaction (CS) in government and private hospitals in India.

The study employs questionnaire‐survey approach to obtain the perceptions of patients and attendants. The instruments developed have been validated using tests for reliability, validity and uni‐dimensionality. Data collected have been analyzed by using statistical techniques such as bi‐variate correlation and multiple regression.

Patients and attendants treat the interpersonal aspect of care as the most important one, as they cannot fully evaluate the technical quality of healthcare services. The study also revealed that the hospital service providers have to understand the needs of both patients and attendants in order to gather a holistic view of their services.

Results of the study are dependent on the nature and number of respondents, i.e. the study has captured only the perceptions of service receivers – patients and attendants; and sample size of the study – 204 patients and 204 attendants – due to limited response rate and other operational constraints.

The present study allows the hospital administrators to benchmark their hospitals with those of their competitors by comparing the mean values of the dimensions of SQ. The study also allows a comparison of the performance of government and private hospitals in terms of the services offered.

The study conceptualizes hospital SQ as an eight‐dimensional framework. Further, it also presents the relationship between SQ and CS in Indian Government and private hospitals.