Page 143 - DMGT408DMGT203_Marketing Management

Marketing Management/Essentials of Marketing

Notes 6.2.4 Service Quality and Differentiation

Delivering high-quality services is one of the most challenging tasks service organisations face.
The quality of service is tested at each service encounter. The nature of service is such that it
makes their evaluation difficult. Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry define service quality as the
customers’ perception of how well a service meets or exceeds their expectations. It is the level of
conformance of service to customer specifications and expectations. Consumers form service
expectations based on past experiences, marketing communications, and word-of-mouth and it
is the consumer who finally judges the service quality. This forces service marketers to take an
outside-in approach and evaluate their service quality from consumer’s point of view. Service
marketers must determine what benefits consumers expect to receive, and then develop their
service products that meet or exceed those expectations. When competing services are similar,
customer are won or lost based on the quality of service. In service marketing, customer value
is a focus of gaining competitive advantage. The following equation shows the balancing act
necessary to deliver service satisfaction to consumers.
Customer Satisfaction = Perceived Delivered Service ≥≥ ≥≥ ≥ Expected Service
Service Quality Evaluation: Evaluation difficulties arise because of the intangible nature of
services. There is nothing to see, touch, smell, taste, or hear. According to Zethaml, unlike
tangible products, services have very few search qualities and almost all quality-related aspects
depend on experience during purchase and consumption of a service.

Example: Beauty parlour services are high in experience qualities.
In case of some services, it might be difficult for consumers to evaluate service quality even after
purchase and consumption of the service because they lack knowledge or skills, such as a
surgical operation, or consulting and must have a great deal of faith in the competence and
integrity of the service provider.

According to Gronroos, to compete successfully a service marketer must first determine how
consumers perceive service quality, and secondly determine in what ways service quality is
influenced. Further, Gronroos argued that functional quality dimension of service is more
important than technical quality. This means the interactive aspect of service marketing
(interaction between service employee and consumer) is the most important component of
service quality.
Managing consumers’ perceived service quality requires matching consumer expectations and
the perceived service quality. To keep the gap between consumer expectation and perception
minimal, service marketer’s promises and communications must not be unrealistic compared to
the service that customers will actually receive. Secondly, management must understand what
factors affect the technical and functional dimensions of service and how consumers perceive
these dimensions of service quality.

Task Interview any five friends of yours and learn how satisfied they are with
the services of cable service provider. Prepare a report and suggest ways to
improve this service.

To develop greater understanding of the nature of service quality and deliver high-quality
services, Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry developed a model that shows major requirements
for delivering high-quality service (Figure 6.4).

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