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Investigating and evaluation of service quality gaps by revised Servqual model (Case study: The M.A students of Azad university of Najaf abad)
Mehdi Ghasemi Department of Management, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad branch, Iran Ali kazemi Department of Management,University of Esfahan, Iran Ali Nasr Esfahani Department of Management,University of Esfahan, Iran Abstract: New managerial methods define quality as the customer satisfaction .Therefore all the organizations have to identify the high quality and sharp service offering obstacles and solve them. The aim of this study was investigating strength and weak points of Islamic Azad university of Najaf Abad's service quality system based on M.A student's opinions with revised Servqual model. Revised Servqual model was developed by Sureshchander for the first time. This model contains 5 dimensions which includes 41 clauses. This dimensions are, tangibles of service, systematization of service delivery, core service, social responsibility, and human element of service delivery. This research was a descriptive and survey research and the probability method was used for sampling. The data collection instrument was questionnaire which its reliability was determined 0.95% with cronbach's alpha coefficient with SPSS software .The validity of the instrument has been approved considering the books, articles and teacher's opinions. Results indicate there are gaps in all dimensions. The deepest gap belongs to social responsibility dimension and afterward there was human element of service delivery with a short difference. At the end, some suggestion was made to decrease these gaps, such as, educating staffs to improve their service commitment, decreasing service offering costs and making effective attempt to develop service capacities. Keywords: Expectations, Perceptions, Service quality gap and Revised Servqual model Introduction: Providing excellent service quality and high customer satisfaction is the important issue and challenge facing the contemporary service industry (Hung et al., 2003). Services quality and customer satisfaction have been for this recent years important topics both for the academic world and for the researches in the field of marketing (Ueno, 2010). The attention directed to these two concepts, services quality and customer satisfaction is mainly due to the harsh competition among private companies on the market, as well as to the pressure of political factors and of the population, over organizations in the field of public administration. The key to 1397

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the competitive advantage is to deliver high-quality services, services that in exchange will generate the customer satisfaction. (Sureshchandar et. al., 2002). Service quality has since emerged as a pervasive strategic force and a key and a strategic issue an management agenda (Eisen ,1999). There is no surprise that practitioners and academics alike are seen on accurately measuring service quality in order to better understand its essential antecedents and consequences and ultimately establish methods for improving quality to achieve competitive advantage and build customer loyalty (Diamontopolous et.al.,2000). The rapid development and competition of service quality, in both developed and developing countries has made it important for companies to measure and evaluate the quality of service encounters (Brown and Bitner, 2007). Educational system as a service provider section has to provide a situation to improve societies in the economical, social, cultural, and educational developments. In our country educational system has an important task in growing human resources and providing them for various sections. According to new developments, population increasing and financial constraints, educational system has to upgrade its quality levels. For this purpose educational system must be accountable to the external environment. Literature Review Definition of service quality Parasuraman, Berry and Zeithaml (1991) defined service quality as the extent of discrepancy between customer's expectations or desires and their perceptions. Asubonteng et al. (1996) believes service quality can be defined as the difference between customers expectations for service performance prior to the service encounter and their perceptions of the service received. Gronroos (2002) says service quality is the subjective comparison that customers make between the quality of the service that they want to receive and what they actually get. Othman and Owen (2002) define quality as the degree of differences between customer's perceptions and expectations. The SERVQUAL model: The marketing academics Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985) developed and iterated the SERVQUAL method based on two principles: Service quality can be divided into dimensions, and measured as a difference of expectations and perceptions. This model is trying to show the effective activities of the service organization that influence the perception of quality. Moreover, the model shows the interaction between these activities and identifies the linkages between the key activities of the service organization or marketer which 1398

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are pertinent to the delivery of a satisfactory level of service quality. The links are described as gaps or discrepancies: that is to say, a gap represents a significant obstacles to achieving a satisfactory level of service quality (Shahin et al., 2010). Parasuraman et al. (1985) proposed that service quality is a function of the differences between expectation and performance along the quality dimensions. They developed a service quality model based on gap analysis (Figure1). The gaps include (Seth and Deshmaukh, 2005): Gap 1: The first gap is between consumer expectations and management perceptions of consumer expectations. This gap addresses the difference between consumers expectations and managements perceptions of service quality. Gap 2: The second gap is between management perceptions of customer expectation and service quality specifications. This gap addresses the difference between managements perceptions of consumers expectations and service quality specifications Gap 3: The third gap is between service quality specifications and service actually delivered. This gap addresses the difference between service quality specifications and service actually delivered Gap 4: The fourth gap is between service delivery and what is communicated to customers about the service .This gap addresses the difference between service delivery and the communications to consumers about service delivery Gap 5: The fifth gap is between the customers perceptions of service quality and their expectations of service quality. This gap addresses the difference between consumers expectation and perceived service. This gap depends on size and direction of the four gaps associated with the delivery of service quality on the marketers side.

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According to this model, SERVQUAL scale has proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1988) for measuring Gap 5. Parasuraman et al. (1985) mentioned ten factors for evaluating service quality (including tangible, reliability, responsiveness, courtesy, credibility, security, accessibility, communication and understanding the customer). These ten factors are simplified and collapsed into five factors. These five dimensions are stated as follows (Shahin et al., 2010). 1) Tangible (Physical, facilities, equipments and appearance of personnel). 2) Reliability (Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately). 3) Responsiveness. (Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service) 4) Assurance (including competence, courtesy, credibility and security knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence). 5) Empathy (including access, communication, understanding the customer). Caring and individualized attention that the firm provides to its customers. The revised SERVQUAL model: SERVQUAL has been the object of controversies and criticism (Asubonteng et.al, 1996, Buttle, 1996).The service quality gaps models can be criticized on both methodological and conceptual grounds (Cronin and Taylor, 1992). Teas (1993) questioned the validity of perceptionexpectation gap with conceptual and operational problem in the definition of the expectation Brown et al. (1993) raised psychometric concerns regarding the use of difference score and felt 1400

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that the gap model would display poor reliability, because expectation and perception could be positively correlated. These criticisms made researchers to define a more accurate model which include more details. Another reference model that tries to conceptualize the dimensions of service quality from the customers perspective is the model suggested by G.S. Sureshchandar (2002) who considers that the defining dimensions of the service quality from the customers perspective are those presented in the following table: (table 1) Table 1-Revised SERVQUAL model dimensions
Dimensions Factors of the service quality

No

Dimension description of the service quality It refers to the tangible aspects of service delivery, aspects that are not related to human factor and which are not made up of: what the surrounding in which the service delivery takes place, looks like ease and accessibility in the building, accessibility to the utilities in the building, the existence and/or the way in which the materials necessary for the service delivery are presented-proper forms and petitions, information and descriptive material It refers to aspects made up of procedures, proceeding standards and system that systemize the process of service delivery It refers to content of effective elements provided by the system and is made of the features of all the things of the service offers It refers to those aspects that contribute to the ethical and moral feature of the organization via-a vis its client as well as towards the members of the community in general. These aspects that contribute to the formation and maintenance have a significant influence on the assessment of the general service quality

Tangible aspects of the service

Systematization of providing the service

Service core

Social responsibility

Human element of service delivery

It refers to all aspects related to human factors

Source:G,S,Sureshchander,C, Rajendran, R.N. Anantharaman,(2002)The relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction-a factor specific approach,Journal of service Marketing,vol,16, nr.4,pp.365 The model which is used in this research is Surshchander model. This model has 5 dimensions which include 41 clauses. In comparison with the elementary SERVQUAL model it has 19 more clauses and is paying more attention to details which could be important and effective on customers.

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Hypotheses

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According to the theoretical framework discussed, six hypotheses were developed for the study, which are listed as below: H1: There is significant difference between expectations and perceptions of students based on tangible of service dimension of model. H2: There is significant difference between expectations and perceptions of students based on systematization of service delivery dimension of model. H3: There is significant difference between expectations and perceptions of students based on core service dimension of model. H4: There is significant difference between expectations and perceptions of students based on social responsibility dimension of model. H5: There is significant difference between expectations and perceptions of students based on human element of service delivery dimension of model. H6: There is significant difference between expectations and perceptions of students of perceived service quality based on revised SERVQUAL model.

Methodology of research Revised SERVQUAL model questionnaire: Two forms with determined questions were developed. The first form is used to measure customers expectations and the second is used to measure customers perceptions. The items used in both questionnaires are adapted from those in the revised SERVQUAL model. The questionnaire included 41 questions that each one were related to a particular clause of a specific dimension .According to this, the 10 questions pertained to measuring tangible of service dimension gap, 6 questions for systematization of service delivery dimension, 5 for core service dimension, 7 for social responsibility dimension and the 13 remaining questions belonged to human element of service delivery dimension. The 5-point Likert spectrum scale was used to determining the students opinions .The questionnaire consists of two specific spectrums which one of them represents the expectation of students of a particular clause and other one shows their perceptions of perceived service quality of that same clause.

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Validity and reliability test Validity is the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure. It is vital for a test to be valid in order for the results to be accurately applied and interpreted. The validity of the instrument has been approved with books, articles and teacher's opinions. Reliability shows the stability and consistency of the instrument which is used for measuring the concept. In this study, 30 primary questionnaires were distributed to measure Cronbach's alpha coefficient. After analyzing primary data, the reliability score was 0.95 which was appropriate result for the final test. Data collection: The population of this study were the M.A students of university of Najaf Abad .At the time period of this research ,there were 2623 students who studying in this level, So it was practically rather impossible to examine the whole population of interest due to constraints of resources such as time and money .Hence, the required sample was computed with Cochran's formula ,considering 0.1 for the standard error deviation .the number of sample size was determined 93, so 130 questionnaires were prepared and distributed between students. A total of 107

satisfactory questionnaires were returned, thereby giving a response rate of 82.3%.

Findings: Data analyzing: After the questionnaires were returned, data were collected and sorted into the SPSS software for analyzing. The average scores of expectations and perceptions related to each clause of questionnaires were computed. The final data consisted of the differences between perceptions and expectations of each clause of questionnaire ( ) .the values which are shown in table

are representing the service quality gap for each clause of questionnaires.

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Table 2-Service quality gaps score of all clauses of specific dimensions
Dimensions Clause Effective complaints process The apparent attractiveness of the facility Control over limited conditions On-time service delivery Attractive appearance of artifacts Commitment to promising services Comfortable physical layout Fast delivery service Scheduled service delivery Cleaning Sufficient number of employees Service capacity upgrading Standard processes Necessary and sufficient facilities being Without error processes Non-complex processes Diversity and range of services Innovation in Services The intensity and depth of services Suitable office range-time Time-consuming operating Employees fair treatment Service delivery with minimum cost Service excellence Employees commitment sense Having multiple branch Being moral pattern Providing good services to all segments Employees demanding to help costumers Schedule informing Confidence preparing situation Staff skills in crisis Employees with high perceived sense Employees with high-level knowledge Customers feedback usage Customers security Paying attentions to customers Courteous staff Reaction power against the crisis Decorated and clean staffs Objectives and information quality estimation expectations 4.505 4.383 4.318 4.514 4.121 4.533 4.430 4.533 4.336 4.383 4.14 4.486 4.224 4.523 4.318 4.318 4.252 4.28 4.327 4.243 4.206 4.327 4.579 4.215 4.393 4.421 4.215 4.355 4.43 4.243 4.336 4.318 4.168 4.346 4.439 4.355 4.187 4.393 4.374 4.281 4.505

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perceptions 2.243 2.757 2.645 2.682 2.645 2.514 2.411 2.43 2.756 2.804 2.477 2.121 2.364 2.383 2.346 2.336 2.364 2.411 2.299 2.168 2.43 2.178 2.093 2.159 2.252 2.121 2.308 2.431 2.308 2.168 2.523 2.486 2.14 2.15 2.074 2.234 2.29 2.224 1.972 2.224 2.243

Gap score -2.262 -1.626 -1.673 -1.832 -1.476 -2.019 -2.019 -2.103 -1.580 -1.579 -1.663 -2.365 -1.860 -2.140 -1.972 -1.982 -1.888 -1.869 -2.028 -2.075 -1.776 -2.149 -2.486 -2.056 -2.141 -2.300 -1.907 -1.924 -2.122 -2.075 -1.813 -1.832 -2.028 -2.196 -2.365 -2.121 -1.897 -2.169 -2.402 -2.057 -2.262

Tangible of services

Systematization
of service delivery

Service core

Social responsibility

Human element

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In table 2, a negative service quality gap represent student's expectation is more than their perception of a specific clause. According to the table, the organization has had the better service delivery performance and has got the lower gap scores on attractive appearance of artifacts (-1.476), cleaning (-1.579), and scheduled service delivery (-1.580) consecutively. Three deepest gaps belong to Service delivery with minimum cost (-2.486) , reaction power against the crisis (-2.402) and service capacity upgrading (-2.365) based on students viewpoints .it shows the organization has not worked well on this clauses and need to pay more attentions on them to increasing satisfaction.

Table 3-The final gap scores related to each dimension Dimension Tangible of services Systematization of service delivery Service core Social responsibility Human element Average Exp.mean 4.406 Per.mean 2.589 Gap Score -1.817

4.335

2.338

-1.997

4.262 4.358 4.337 4.340

2.334 2.22 2.224 2.341

-1.928 -2.138 -2.113 -1.999

As it has shown in the table 3, the biggest gap between dimensions belongs to social responsibility and there is human element with a short difference afterward .On the other hand the organization has had the best performance in tangible of service dimension and has gotten the lowest gap score. According to this table the gaps score of all dimensions are really close to each other and the organization has to pay a public attention to all clauses to improve satisfaction level. Hypotheses testing: As described before six hypotheses were developed for this research. After analyzing data, and categorizing into the software, Pair T-Test was used for testing hypotheses.

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Table 4-Pair Sample Test result of testing hypothesis
Paired Differences Sig. (2-tailed) Df T 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Upper Lower Std. Error Mean .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 106 106 106 106 106 106 31.269 28.391 26.819 37.514 36.363 39.829 1.9320 2.1363 2.0796 2.2573 2.2144 2.1007 1.7016 1.8574 1.7933 2.0306 1.9854 1.9015 .0581 .0703 .0722 .0571 .0577 .0502 Std. Deviati on .6010 .7275 .7468 .5911 .5973 .5197 1.8168 1.9968 1.9364 2.1440 2.0999 2.0011 Mean

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Dimensions

Pairs

Tangible of services Systematization

Service core Social responsibility Human element Overall

Pair1 Pair 2 Pair 3 Pair 4 Pair 5 Pair 6

According to the output of software and the final results which are shown in the table, considering 95% confidence interval of the difference and sig(2-tailed) score(0.000) all hypotheses were approved. It means there are significant differences between expectations and perceptions of students based on all dimensions of models and obviously for overall result. Discussion and conclusion: The aim of this study was the investigating and evaluating service quality gaps based on the M.A students of Najaf Abad Azad University, by using revised SERVQUAL model. The results represent there are deep service quality gaps in all dimensions. The deepest gap belongs to social responsibility and there is human element with a short difference afterward. The results also indicate that the organization has had the better performance in tangible of service dimension in comparison with the other dimensions. The negative mean of all clauses related to the dimensions obviously show there are adequate opportunities to improve service quality level. According to table II the biggest gap score is related to service delivery with minimum cost which shows students think the price of service delivery in comparison with its quality is too high. This also indicates they are not satisfied with the organization's power of reaction against crisis and believing organizations capability to upgrading service delivery capacities, according to their previous experiences. Gap existence in all dimension shows the organization could not solve the student's expectations of service delivery and also did not perform well in attracting student's confidence feelings about service delivery pattern. Overall, this suggestions can help the organization to decrease service quality gaps and increasing students satisfaction. Providing the services with less price, upgrading the capacity of service level in facing sudden crisis, increasing employees commitment by educating them and providing better job condition, offering systematic method to investigating to complaints and solving them and represent results to students, and facilitating the administrative processes as well as possible. \

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References Aldlaigan, H and Buttle, F (2002) ," SYSTERA-SQ:A new measure of bank service quality" International Journal of Service Industry Management,Vol.13, No. 4. Asubonteng, P., McCleary, K.J. and Swan J.E. (1996), SERVQUAL revisited: a critical review of service quality, The Journal of Service Marketing, Vol. 10, pp. 62-81 Brown, S.W. and Bitner, M.J." Mandating a service revolution for marketing. in Lush, R.F. & Vargo, S.L". The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing Journal, pp. 393-405, 2007 Brown, T.J., Churchill, G.A. & Peter, J.P. (1993). Improving the Measurement of Service Quality. Journal of Retailing, 69(1), 127-139 Buttle, F. (1996), SEVQUAL: review, critique, research agenda, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 30, nr. 1, pp. 8-32 Cronin, J.J. & Taylor, S.A. (1992). Measuring service quality: a re-examination and extension. Journal of Marketing, 6(7), 55-68 Diamontopoulos A, Schlegelmilch BB (2000). Taking the fear out of Data Analysis: a Step-byStep Approach. London: The Dryden Press Eisen, S.V., Wilcox, M. & Leff, H.S. (1999) Assessing behavioural health outcomes in outpatient programs reliability and validity of the BASIS-32. Journal of Behavioural Health Sciences and Research, 26, 517 Gronroos, C. (1984) A service quality model and its marketing implications, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 36-44, Hung, Y.H., Huang, M.L. & Chen, K.S. (2003). Service quality evaluation by service quality performance matrix. Total quality Management & Business Excellence, 14(1), 79-89 Othman, Abdulqawi & Owen, lynn,( 2002) Adopting & Measuring Customer Service Quality (sq) in Islamic Banks, International Journal of Islamic Financial Services. Vol.3, No. 1, Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V., & Berry, L. (1985). A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research. Journal of Marketing, Vol. 49, pp.41-50. Parasuraman, A, Zeithaml, V.A, & Berry, L.L. (1988). SERVQUAL: a multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. Journal of Retailing, Vol. 64, No.1, pp.1240 Seth, N. & Deshmukh, S.G. (2005). Service quality models: a review. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 22(9), 913-949 Shahin ,A. Samea .M,( 2010), "Developing the Models of Service Quality Gaps: A Critical Discussion" Business Management and StrategyJournal, ISSN 2157-6068 , Vol. 1, No. 1: E2, Shahin, A.(2003) ," SERVQUAL and Model of Service Quality Gaps: A Framework for Determining and Prioritizing Critical Factors in Delivering Quality Services", 4th International conference of quality management, July
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Sureshchandar, G.S., Rajendran, C. and Anantharaman, R.N. (2002), The relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction a factor approach, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol . 14, nr. 4, pp. 363-379 Teas, K.R. (1993). Expectations, Performance Evaluation and customers Perceptions of Quality. Journal of Marketing, 57(9), 18-34. Ueno, A. (2010). What are the fundamental features supporting service quality? Journal of Services Marketing ,Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 7486

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