Marketing: The Importance Of Service Quality

Despite the intricacy in making judgments about the quality of a service due to its intangible nature, service quality is important since it enables managers and researchers to compare consumers‟ expectations in accordance with the performance of the service provider. This enables management to be aware of the level of quality services rendered to customers and makes it easier to gauge customers‟ satisfaction. Service quality is measured to know how effective the services rendered satisfy or meets the expectations of customers

(Lewis & Boom, 1983). Service quality has been defined by different authors in diverse area of studies but what is important is the fact that despite these differences in their line of definitions there is a common sense

886). This has provoked an urge for researchers in the field of marketing to carry out an intense and continuous study in this realm. Service quality is an important aspect that is and should be considered by management especially during implementation of their strategic decision planning (Desai, 2011, p. 40). According to Nalini et al., (2011, p. 52), service quality plays a significant role in the success of every business. In order for businesses to improve and maintain a better positioning in the competitive era, it is necessary to evaluate the performance of the services rendered by them. In addition, the service provider companies spend a great deal of time and money in configuring the high quality services to satisfy their customers. An assessment of customer loyalty and trust enables the company to deliver proper services to the right segment of customers. These services can be delivered rightly if the company understands consumers‟ perception and expectations. Consumers‟ perception of company‟s performance is what is experienced by the consumer himself

(Parasuraman et al., 1988, p.17-18). Meanwhile consumer‟s expectation is described

755). Therefore before I proceed, I will like to prove that it is a valid proxy for customer satisfaction. Having buttressed the concept of service quality, as it will be used in this thesis, the author will like to discuss briefly the concept of customer satisfaction before linking them .

It could be understood that there is a need for companies or organizations to augment their level of quality service in order to create customer satisfaction which in another way enables continuous erecting and maintaining customer‟s loyalty. According to Oliver,

(1997, p. 13), customer satisfaction is an outcome of a consumers‟ judgment about the features of the services delivered by the service provider. Customer satisfaction is also described as a function of the level of product/service performance with respect to customers‟ expectations and a customers‟ satisfaction may depends on the set of attribute made about the success or failure of the product/service performance (Pham, Goukens,

Lehmann, & Stuart, 2010, p. 921). Customer satisfaction is defined by Goncalves &

Sampaio, (2012, p. 1511) as “consumer‟s fulfillment response”. Looking at the above mentioned definition, customers‟ satisfaction has a lot to do with what the