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1、标题：Prioritizing service quality dimensions原文：In the “age of customer” delivering quality service is considered an essential strategy for success and survival in todays competitive environment (Dawkins and Reichheld, 1990; Parasuraman et al., 1985; Reichheld and Sasser, 1990; Zeithaml et al., 1990).
2、What constitutes service quality has attracted the attention of researchers all over the world. The debate continues.Even as researchers continue to debate the determinants of service quality a few important issues remain unanswered. Is there a universal set of determinants that determine the servic
3、e quality across a section of services? Does the service characteristic gets reflected in what customers expect out of delivery of a particular service? Is there an inherent difference in services because they must be delivered in a particular way and does that have a bearing on what becomes importa
4、nt for the customer? Practitioners continue to look for advice and suggestion as to what constitute service quality for their offers and furthermore, if they tend to reposition their offers by varying some characteristics of their offers, for example, by increasing or reducing tangibility or custome
5、r contact, etc. What are the operating characteristics of determinants as they together constitute the service quality? This paper is an attempt to generate evidence if difference in services that result into peculiar service characteristics returns customers with a unique set of expectations those
6、different from other service types. The paper also intends to examine if the determinants of service quality show some predictable behavior as service type tend to differ based on some criterion. This paper therefore first, goes through the discussion on determinants of service quality and then, the
7、re is a small discussion on service classifications which can serve as basis for difference in service nature.Johnston (1995) suggests that one of the pressing issues before services research concerns the identification of the determinants of service quality. This should be a central concern for ser
8、vice management academics and practitioners, as the identification of the determinants of service quality is necessary in order to be able to specify measure, control and improve customer perceived service quality.Early studies during 1980s focused on determining what service quality meant to custom
9、ers and developing strategies to meet customer expectations (Parasuraman et al., 1985). The early pioneers of services marketing in Europe, especially the Nordic School, argued that service quality consists of two or three underlying dimensions. Lehtinen and Lehtinen (1985) referred to physical and
10、interactive quality while Gronroos (1984) identified a technical dimension, a functional dimension and the firms image as a third dimension. In later years, Parasuraman et al. (1988) published empirical evidence from five service industries that suggested that five dimensions more appropriately capt
11、ure the perceived service quality construct. Building on the pioneering work of the Nordic School of services management and particularly Christian Gronroos, they established service quality as the core of services marketing. Their landmark article in 1985 conceptualized service quality as a gap bet
12、ween consumers expectations and perceptions (Parasuraman et al., 1985) and inspired many other researchers to examine the services quality construct within a marketing premise(Berry et al., 1985). However, their contribution has not gone unchallenged. Much of this interest has centered on the contro
13、versy generated by their service quality gaps model (Parasuraman et al., 1985), and particularly the SERVQUAL instrument developed to measure service quality (Parasuraman et al., 1988). Many researchers who have used the SERVQUAL instrument have been critical of its paradigmatic foundation, its conv
14、ergent and discriminant validity, the use of difference scores and the use of negatively phrased items (Carman, 1990; Babakus and Boller, 1992; Peter et al., 1993; Buttle, 1995).Variations fromunidimensionality (Cronin andTaylor, 1992) to two, three, four, six and eight factor structures have been r
15、eported (Babakus and Boller, 1992; Brensinger and Lambert, 1990; Carman, 1990; Cliff and Ryan, 1994; Schneider et al., 1992). Spreng and Singh (1993) have hinted at the possible combination of some of the five dimensions due to high inter-correlations. Johnston and Silvestro (1990) went on to add th
16、e customers perspective to the 12 service quality characteristics. This led to the identification of an additional five service quality determinants: attentiveness/helpfulness, care, commitment, functionality, integrity; it also led to a refining of some of the other definitions. A number of other a
17、uthors have also postulated their own determinants of service quality, though in some cases they appear to have been based on Berry et al.s (1985) well publicized work.Lately, even the developers of the instrument have produced evidence confirming the doubts expressed about the five-dimensional conf
18、iguration. Thus, despite the “many” studies which have analyzed the dimensions measured by SERVQUAL, “there is no clear consensus on the number of dimensions and their interrelationships.” This uncertainty hampers our understanding of service quality and casts doubts over the use of the SERVQUAL ins
19、trument in future research. It also shows that a considerable amount of research still needs to be done concerning the dimensionality of perceived service quality in general and SERVQUAL in particular, as called for by its developers (Parasuraman et al., 1994).Chowdhary and Prakash (2001) have sugge
20、sted a two factors theory that a more detailed approach is required wherein each factor needs to be considered independently and not as an aggregate dimension. They report evidence to support two-factor theory for services that was discarded by earlier researchers. They argue to differentiate betwee
21、n the factors and the outcome of performance along these factors. The study describes the two factors as “vantage factors” and “qualifying factors.” Marketers need to be selective in that certain factors behave as vantage factors while others as qualifying factors. The two are different in nature an
22、d require a differential treatment.Relative importance of dimensionsParasuraman et al. (1988) have observed that their instrument (SERVQUAL) can be used to evaluate the relative importance of the dimensions of quality in influencing customers overall perceptions of a service. The relative weight tha
23、t customers seem to give to each quality dimension can be determined. One of the important results that have been reported in the early studies of relative importance is that customers are quite consistent in both their imputed and their direct rankings of the importance of the service quality attri
24、butes. In one key study (Parasuraman et al., 1988), reliability was demonstrated to be the most important dimension and empathy (a composite of understanding and access) the least important across a seemingly wide array of service types. Zeithaml et al. (1990) also report, using a variation of SERVQ
25、UAL that tangibles proves to be consistently unimportant. A pertinent question here is that whether such a generalization is possible. Chowdhary (2000) suggest that generalizations are difficult to make because of variation in the basic nature of services (labor or capital intensity) and that the ty
26、pe of industry affect the design of service. It was seen that empathy and responsiveness were found to be more important for labor intensive industry while tangibles and reliability affected the assessment of quality dimensions in case of capital intensive services. This was also confirmed by the re
27、sults from a similar study done for “Management Education” where the single most important dimension was the knowledge of the teacher (assurance).Services unique selling proposition can be woven around different criteria (tangibility, customization, labor intensity, etc.). This criterion in turn cou
28、ld be the key performance dimension. Different user groups can see each type of service in turn as performing on a number of factors across different dimensions. From among these factors, some are the key factors (KFs) and are relatively more important for the consumer. A number of these KFs could b
29、e simultaneously important for these user groups, though the relative importance of these dimensions may vary from one user group to another. There may also be a general shift in consumer preference for a dimension, for example, from “medical-care” through “patient-care” to “hospital-care,” incase o
30、f the consumers of healthcare. Their importance may also vary from one consumer to another.Service typesService classifications have been offered since early 1980s. Different authors have suggested different taxonomies based on different criterions. Of these four are not worthy Chase (1978), Chase a
31、nd Tansik (1983), Schmenner (1986), Wemmerlov (1990) and Lovelock (1983). Chase segments by the extent of customer contact in the delivery of the service. Schmenner classifies services using two dimensions, with the degrees of interaction (generalized from “contact”) and customization on one axis an
32、d the degree of labor intensity on the other. Wemmerlov (1990) more recently proposed a classification scheme where the variables of differentiation are the degree of routinization of the process, the “object” of the service process, and customer contact. His operationalization of contact differs fr
33、om both Chase and Schmenner in that heredefines it to be “direct” “indirect” or “no” contact with the customer, rather than simply as “high” or “low”. Lovelock (1983) has suggested categorizing services into four distinctive categories based on what a service organization is actually processing and
34、how does it perform that task. A service organization may be servicing individual customers or alternatively it may be servicing their possessions. Further, the servicing may be physical as in case of hair cutting or a travel by train. Alternatively, the servicing may be intangible as in case of edu
35、cation, entertainment or consultancy. He therefore suggests a 2 2 classification of service processes. This scheme elaborates on how and what benefits the customer in a service transaction. This classification has tangibility of offer across the recipient of services. Why tangibility answers what be
36、nefits the customer a tangible action or an intangible one? The second issue answers how the service benefits the customer by service his self or his possessions. This in turn determines what the nature of a service offer is. It answers an important question whether the customers need to be mentally
37、 or physically present to receive such services. For example, the services targeted at people themselves require the presence. While tangible services require the physical presence, the intangibles can be restructured to be delivered through alternative media or at least the alternate media can be u
38、sed to support the core service. Similarly, we witness the intangible services directed at possessions having greater propensity to be offered thru electronic media. Services directed at possession do not necessarily require the presence of the customer as a must. Therefore, even the tangible action
39、s directed at possession can be redesigned as pickup services where possessions can be picked up from customers location, served and returned. This eliminates the need for customers entry into providers space and thus such services can be located in low cost obscure locations as against a high-prese
40、nce venue. Presence (or absence) of the customer will also affect the demand and supply issue (Chowdhary and Chowdhary, 2005).MethodologyThe above cited literature review has discussed the service dimension and the tools to evaluate service quality. Yet it is insufficient is establishing any generic
41、 relative importance of service dimensions. Researcher believes that such a generalization may not be possible across all service types. This study seeks to make out whether some generalization is possible within service types and does that vary with classification variables. For the purpose of inve
42、stigation, researcher has used Lovelocks (1983) classification.The pertinent research question was whether the different categories of service processes show a pattern vis-a -vis the importance of different determinants of service quality (the five dimensions suggested by Parasuraman et al.). The ob
43、jective was to identify the relative importance of service quality dimensions for different service processes.For each category, four different services were identified (Table I). Thus, in all 16 services were identified. Respondents were chosen randomly. Of 16 service types, 604 respondents were ap
44、proached which resulted in 396 responses. Of these, 356 responses were valid and considered proper to be used for research. Respondents were approached while they were shopping a service/services and were asked to free list what they felt was important and added value to their consumption of a parti
45、cular service. A valid response from 356 respondents returned a 989 free-list items shown in Table II.In the next phase of analysis, the free list items were classified using the five dimensions of Parasuraman et al. For the purpose of this research the five service quality dimensions were defined (
46、the Appendix). A panel of experts helped in classifying the free list items into five service quality dimensions. Panel therefore facilitated ensuring content validity for sorting the items. Panel observed the price with reference to cost, fees, charges, discounts, etc. Figured repeatedly and so it
47、was categorized separately as the sixth dimension and was called “fees.” For a list for any particular service type, we could now generate the relative importance matrix using tally marks. These were then converted into percentage scores. Thus, we could get a score for each dimension for each servic
48、e type (Table III). Similarly, the score were calculated for each service process category.出处：Nimit Chowdhary and Monika Prakash.Prioritizing service quality dimensionsJ.Managing Service Quality，2007，17 （5）, 2007：pp.493-509.标题：服务质量方面的优先次序译文：在“客户时代”，提供优质服务被认为是一种在这个竞争激烈的环境中成功和生存的必要策略，(Dawkins和Reichhel
49、d，1990；Parasuraman等，1989;Reichheld和Sasser，1990；Zeithaml等，1990)。服务质量由什么构成已引起了世界各地研究人员的关注，争论仍在继续。即使研究人员继续争论服务质量的决定因素，一些重要问题仍没有答案。是否存在一种普遍的因素通过一部分服务来确定其服务质量？服务特点是否在顾客期望得到的某一特定的交易中得到体现？是否因为他们必须以特定方式的交易而使服务存在内在的差异，并且影响顾客认为什么是重要的？实践人员继续寻找关于什么构成服务质量的建议和意见，此外，如果他们倾向于通过改变自己的服务特点来重新定位他们的服务,例如,通过增加或减少客户联络的确定性等。什么是运作模式特征的决定因素，他们共同构成服务质量？本文是为了证明不同的服务会提供特殊服务特征来回报客户独有的期望这些不同于其他服务类型。本文还打算检验服务质量的决定因素是否会表现出一些可预见的行为，一些不同的标准导致不同的服务类型。本文首先通过对服务质量的影响因素的讨论研究，然后,有一个对于以服务性差异为基础的服务分类的小讨论。Johnston (1995
