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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether customer‐perceived service quality and expectation of service quality have causal impacts on overall customer satisfaction.

Data on all the variables were elicited from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and these were analyzed using the Granger causality method.

Satisfaction and perceived quality were positively related. Even though perceived quality did not Granger‐cause satisfaction in the short term, it did so in the long term. Likewise, even though satisfaction did not Granger‐cause perceived quality in the short term, it did so in the long term. But customer expectations Granger‐caused both satisfaction and expectation in the short‐term and the long term.

The findings are based on only one company. Extrapolation to other companies demands caution and the data may not satisfy asymptotic assumptions.

The study contributes to the literature by advising managers to extend their customer satisfaction tracking to overall customer satisfaction with its strategic implications.

Global competition is forcing American Managers to rethink the way they do business. It is no longer the “big that eat the small” it is now the “fast that eat the slow”. This paper will examine how business process orientation (BPO) has a positive impact on esprit de corps, reduced conflict and improve connectedness and overall business performance. This implies that there is a ROI for becoming more business process oriented and reengineering an organization to more horizontal structures.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the dimensions used in judging the hospital services quality; to develop a tool for measuring perceived service quality for hospitals; to test the validity and reliability of the new scale; and finally to use the results of the data collected to suggest improving service quality.

A cross-sectional field study was conducted among 400 hospital out-patients in Thailand. The researchers administered the SERVQUAL instrument in order to assess the applicability of these service quality attributes to the out-patient hospital setting in Thailand. The data collected were used to assess the psychometric properties of the SERVQUAL instrument and to analyze whether and to what extent the SERVQUAL dimensions adequately predicted overall service quality among Thai hospital out-patient respondents. The psychometric properties of the instrument were quite acceptable and the resulting five-factor structure was consistent to and confirms earlier measurement theory. The measurement model as estimated by the use of structural equation modeling further showed that the hypothesized model fit the empirical data quite well.

The results indicate that SERVQUAL's five latent dimensions had a significant influence on overall service quality. Responsiveness had most influence; followed by empathy, tangibles, assurance; and finally reliability.

The results of this study demonstrate that service quality can be assessed in diverse service settings such as hospital out-patient departments. Further, SERVQUAL is robust enough to capture the critical elements used to assess overall service quality. The study was limited in its external validity and prediction was constrained due to the nature of the data collected, i.e. cross-sectional design. This study also chose to focus on one outcome variable, i.e. overall service quality. Other critical variables might be reasonably assessed, e.g. customer satisfaction, loyalty intentions, firm performance.

The present study has several managerial implications for service quality enhancement in the hospitals in Thailand. First, given that responsiveness, was the strongest predictor of service quality, hospital out-patient employees can exercise strong influence over perceived quality by giving sincere and detailed information about service conditions, by being willing to help and by offering fast and efficient service to out-patients.

The World Bank reports that health care and hospital care in particular is a growing portion of the economic pie, now nearly 18 percent of GDP in the USA. Global health care administrators are under pressure to not just control costs but to offer a quality health care experience This study offers insight into how the health care out-patient consumer views service quality and the relative importance of the various service quality dimensions in predicting overall service quality.

The objectives of this paper are to provide an overview of service quality and discuss its potential for offering a competitive advantage; to test several research propositions concerning service quality in the Thai telecommunications industry; and to offer managerial implications of the study’s findings and provide directions for future research. The results indicated that perceptions and expectations of service quality level showed no significant difference. A post hoc analysis found that the telecommunication industry received excellent ratings on tangibles, particularly customer service staff’s dress, and low ratings on empathy, particularly service providers’ interest differences. Tangibles are an aspect of service quality that is extremely important to the Thai telecommunication customer. This study provides evidence supporting the proposition that consumers distinguish between the performance cues of customer‐contact employee groups. Service delivery systems should create positive moments of truth by ensuring that the point of customers’ contact is reduced to a minimum.

Asserts that innovation, which plays a key role in product and process improvement in many companies, is the very lifeblood of high technology firms. Considers that because technological change is a function of the economic growth model then technological substitution must be a sub‐function of this model. The ability to forecast technological substitution in the long‐term macro view enables strategic planners to develop trends for their specific technological application. Begins with a brief statement of the problem, followed by a discussion of the theoretical framework, review of related literature, methodology, findings, discussion of findings and their implications and, finally, recommendations to practitioners.

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