[Measuring Service Quality Of Gurkha Tandoori Restaurant]

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible.

DECLARATION

I, [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

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ABSTRACT

Service quality is a growing concern for many service firms in the UK. Today service firms are paying more attention than ever to the needs and expectations of the customers by consistently improving the quality of service provided to their customers. This paper briefly explores the relation between service quality and business performance followed by an assessment of service quality as a framework. The case study focuses on Gurkha Tandoori restaurant in UK, where service quality was measured at six different locations. The findings from the research unveiled that there were significant variations for service quality between the hotels.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

ABSTRACTIV

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW4

Customer complaint behaviours4

Service failures and complaint6

Discussion of Literature8

The determinants of service quality10

Satisfiers versus dissatisfiers13

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY22

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND ANALYSIS24

Analysis of service quality gaps and key findings25

Gap 1: the gap between customer expectations and management perceptions of those expectations25

Gap 1 evaluation26

Gap 2: the gap between management perception of customer expectations and service quality specifications26

Gap 2 evaluation27

Gap 3: the service performance gap: the gap between service equality specifications and27

Gap 3 evaluation29

Gap 4: the gap between service delivery and external communications29

Gap 4 evaluation30

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION31

REFERENCES33

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

During the past few decades service quality has become a major area of attention to practitioners, managers and researchers owing to its strong impact on business performance, lower costs, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability. There has been a continued research on the definition, modeling, measurement, data collection procedure, data analysis etc., issues of service quality, leading to development of sound base for the researchers.

This documented knowledge base through several studies on the subject can be of great use to researchers and practitioners in providing a direction on how to explore/modify the existing service quality concepts with the changing world scenario (shift from conventional personalized services to web enabled services).

For an organization to gain competitive advantage it must use technology to gather information on market demands and exchange it between organizations for the purpose of enhancing the service quality. Researchers and managers thrive for learning details about components of service quality in their organization of obvious reasons of customer satisfaction, increased profitability etc. In this context model gains specific importance as it not only help in learning the factors associated with it but also will provide a direction for improvements.

A conceptual model attempts to show the relationships that exist between salient variables. (Ghobadian et al, 1994). It is a simplified description of the actual situations. 1 It is envisaged that conceptual models in service quality enable management to identify ...