SERVICE MARKETING SMk-S219DH42ISB-1

CHAPTER 2: The Gap Model of Service Quality

Name: TĂNG HẢI NGỌC TRÂM Date: 30TH MAY 2019

Student ID: 31161025268

I) CUSTOMER GAP
 Expectation
standard or reference points that customers bring to the services.
Expectation often consists of what customers believe should/will happen. The
sources of customer expectations are marketer-controlled factors (such as
pricing, advertising, and sales promises) as well as factors that the marketer
has limited ability to affect (innate personal needs, word-of-mouth
communications, and competitive offerings)

 Perception
actual service experience

 Expectation The difference between customer’s expectation & perception

vs Perception are the base assumptions that customers make about your brand, services and
product (what they believe should/will happen). Affected by Word of mouth
communications, Personal needs, Past experience
-customer's impression, awareness and/or consciousness about a company or
its offerings
Ex: When a customer buys a cup of Coffee House milk tea, they expect high
quality and delicious milk tea, but the real perception is that Coffee House tea
leaves are not pretty high-quality products.

II) PROVIDER GAP

Listening gap Service device Service Communication
and standards performance gap
gap gap

1. Listening gap -The difference between customer expectations of service and company
understanding of those expectations because of:
 The lack of accurate understanding of exactly what those
expectations are
 They may not interact directly with customers
 They may be unwilling to ask about expectations
 They may be unprepared to address them
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 Inadequate
customer - When management or empowered employees do not acquire accurate
research information about customers’ expectations, this gap is large.
orientation
 Need research: Formal and informal methods, customer interviews,
survey research, complaint systems, and customer panels

 Lack of -Frontline employees often know a great deal about customers; if management
upward
information is not in contact with frontline employees and does not understand what they
know, the gap widens.
Ex: Sale staff of Samsung interacts with customers every day and listens to all
the complaints of customers. If the manager doesn’t contact with the sale staff
for information, he cannot understand what customers really think about
Samsung products

 Insufficient -When companies focus too much on attracting new customers, they may fail
relationship
focus to understand the changing needs and expectations of their current customers.
Ex: Duong Minh English center always try tos attract new customers without
caring about the feedback for their bad service.

 Inadequate
- It is critical to understand the importance of service recovery—why people
service
recovery complain, what they expect when they complain.
Ex: when Uber & Grab join the taxi market, Vinasun has to investigate why
people complain about the price and service, and develop the strategies to
deal with service shortfalls.
2. Service Design and
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standards gap
-The difference between company understanding of customer expectations
and the development of customer-driven service designs and standards

 Poor service design:

Ex: While Uber & Grab are using modern technological apps, some
traditional taxi companies still provide old platform and poor design.
 Absence of
customer-driven
-When standards do reflect what customers expect, perceptions of the quality
standards
of service they receive are likely to be enhanced. Ex: Mai Linh need to know
what customers really want when they use Grab & Uber, not just creating a
new app and believe the positive changes.

 Inappropriate
physical evidence -By physical evidence, we mean everything from business cards to reports,
and service scape
signage, Internet presence, equipment, and facilities used to deliver the
service. The service scape, the physical setting where the service is delivered.
Ex: Recently, Jollibee facilities is downgraded and out of date a lot
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3. Service performance gap
The discrepancy between the development of customer-driven service
standards and actual service performance by company employees
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 Deficiencies in
human resource
policies

 Customers not fulfilling
roles
 Problems with service
intermediaries
-The HR manager handles the recruitment but he/she doesn’t understand
deeply what is really required for candidates for marketing department; low
competencies; low motivation workplace
Ex: Customers forget to tell the waiter not to bring her cold water

 Failure to match -retailers, franchisees, agents, and brokers.

supply and demand
Ex: Royal Tea do franchise system but service quality is failed because of lack
of service quality control.
Recommendation:

Ex: Mid-Autumn Festival, Christmas or Lunar new year is the peak seasons in
Vietnam that some suppliers are always run out of materials

_ Ensure that employees are willing and motivated to be able to deliver quality
services
_Define customer’s roles and assist them in understanding and performing
their roles effectively.

4. Communication gap _Firm must develop ways to either control or motivate intermediaries to meet
company goals.
_Marketing strategies for managing demand – such as price changes,
advertising, promotion and alternative service offerings
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-The difference between service delivery and service provider’s external

communications (media advertising, sale forces…)
The discrepancy between actual and promised services, therefore, can widen
the customer gap
Ex: Pizza Domino promises: “your pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less,” but
all too often, are let down by the firm’s inability to enable that promise

Broken promises because of:

- Overpromise in ad or personal selling
- Inadequate coordination between operation and marketing
- Different operation and procedures across outlets
Issues in Gap 4:
- Service advertising promises what people do, which cannot be
controlled as a machine => hard to commit 100% but we try to
coordinate actual service delivery with external communication
Pricing the service with different strategies (discounting, couponing,…)
depend on service situation when customer has no initial sense of prices.

III. THE PROVIDER

GAP MODEL
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-The gaps model of service quality serves as a framework for service

organizations attempting to improve quality service and services marketing.

Today I Learnt:
1. The concept of the framework, called the gaps model of service quality
2. Demonstrate that the gaps model is a useful framework for understanding service quality in an
organization
3. Demonstrate that the most critical service quality gap to close is the customer gap, the difference
between customer expectations and perceptions
4. Concept and difference between four gaps called provider gaps and identify factors responsible for ach
of the four.

Topic: customer gap, provider gap, service, performance gap, provider gap