SERVICE QUALITY AND CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR

Service Quality and Customer Behavior

Chapter 1: Introduction

Introduction

Service quality is a concept that has aroused considerable interest and debate in the research literature because of the difficulties in both defining it and measuring it with no overall consensus emerging on either. Research has shown that high service quality contribute significantly to profitability. Service quality is about ensuring customers, both internal and external, get what they want. Customer satisfaction is the feeling or attitude of a customer towards a product or service after it has been used. Satisfaction and service quality are often treated together as functions of customer's perceptions and expectations.

Customer satisfaction is determined by defining customer perceptions of quality, expectations, and preferences. Always there exists an important question: why should service quality be measured? Measurement allows for comparison before and after changes, for the location of quality related problems and for the establishment of clear standards for service delivery. In search of competitive advantage, both practitioners and academics are keen on accurately measuring service quality in order to better understanding its essential antecedent and consequences, and ultimately establish methods for improving and measuring service quality. In this paper we start with the concept of service quality, customer satisfaction and followed by study on different models of measuring service quality while focusing mostly on SERVQUAL approach, which is the most common method for measuring service quality. The purpose of the research is to find the most important service quality dimensions that affect customer satisfaction in retail purchasing in ESPRIT. Since SERVQUAL model is founded a comprehensive method, we are going to adopt and deploy it to encompass various aspects of service quality in relation to the retail shops in ESPRIT. Besides, a questionnaire has been designed based on literature in order to examine all service quality dimensions in SERVQUAL model.  

Background of Problem

The background of the research area is provided in this section. It contains the general idea of e-commerce, retail retailing, customer satisfaction and service quality. This section also describes the importance of service quality and its relationship with customer satisfaction. Then, the problem area will be next discussed to provide a deeper understanding about the research area for reader. The problem discussions end with a problem statement, research objectives and research scopes. In the end of this chapter the contribution of this research is also presented. 

Customer Satisfaction

To understand the importance of customer satisfaction, consider these facts: customers with problems usually don't react and only 4% of them complain; normally a person with problem tells 9 other people about it; while satisfied customers tell 5 other people about their good experiment; keeping a current customer costs about 1/7 of the cost of acquiring a new customer; retaining a current employee costs one tenth of hiring and training a new one. These facts; highlights the crucial role of satisfying customers which brings employee satisfaction; hence, the profit maximization of the company. 

Therefore, organizations need to understand that to what extend their customers would be satisfy. Customer satisfaction in marketing context has specific meanings: Anders Gustafsson, Michael D. Johnson, & Inger Roos (2005) brought customer satisfaction definition as customer's overall evaluation of the date. This satisfaction has positive influences on retaining customers among different variety of services and ...