Relative importance of serice quality dimensions: a multisectoral study

In this article the writers have tried to examine some assumptions to be sure whether they are right or wrong. They also tried to rank the service dimensions based on five criteria. These are tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The study intended to measure the importance of service quality dimensions and examination of the relative importance of quality dimensions should and would expectations and the role of context markets. In this study they have taken four service sectors, namely banking, insurance, fast-food and beauty-salon. They used some methods to find out the relative importance of service quality in this four service sectors. They used the zone of tolerance, the regression, constant some scale model. It was hoped that the output of the three models would be the same. But the real incident is that they vary a lot. When one criterion gets more important in the zone of tolerance then it gets less importance in the two other models. Thus the results could not be generalized to make a forecast in this regard. As it can not be generalized so the marketers have to do a lot. They have to find out the choice criteria of the customers. Moreover, these five criteria are not enough to measure the quality of the service. In this article they said the possibility of the technology to the criteria of the service to measure the relative importance of the service. The important question that still remains is how to optimally deploy resources among these dimensions so that best value to the customers is provided and benefits of customer satisfaction and retention are obtained.

So the above findings suggest that all the service quality dimensions are equally important to the customers. So, no proper ordering can be made taking the service criteria into account. Moreover in most of the service sectors, they can not provide satisfactory service to the customers. It is always below the expectations level of the customers. They dont provide the level of service that goes with the level of zone of tolerance. And it also suggests that the nature of the service does not seem to have a role in establishing an order among the dimensions of services.