Abstract

Services and service quality have become increasingly important competitive differentiators for firms, as well as contributors to national economies. Due to the relative uniqueness of each service, there is little consensus on the dimensions for service quality evaluation. The best known and most widely used of several instruments for measuring service quality is SERVQUAL (1988). Yet, tests of SERVQUAL’s reliability and validity have been mixed. This paper presents results from cross-referencing seven service quality measurement models from seven different industries, with SERVQUAL. Results indicate that only the ‘assurance’ and ‘empathy’ dimensions are represented across all seven industries, while other attributes in the various industry-instruments either map partially or did not map onto SERVQUAL’s (1988) five dimensions. From the mappings, several important gaps in the industry instruments are identified. These results suggest potential from a harmonized set of global service quality dimensions

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