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Introduction
The main objective of this paper is to take up an empirical investigation of the
association between the importance of quality attributes and the width of the
tolerance zone as defined through service expectations. A conjecture stated in
aggregate terms by Parasuraman, Berry and Zeithaml (1991; hereinafter PBZ)
suggested that there must be an inverse association. In other words, the greater
the importance a service user assigns to an attribute, the thinner will be the
tolerance zone defined by the consumer's expectations regarding that same
attribute. In the present paper, the conjecture is approached with a view toward
empirically testing the inverse association suggested by PBZ.
The test relies on a new, simple method for (almost) completely ordering a
list of quality attribute items in terms of their importance. The new method is
presented en route; its main idea is to aggregate a set of partial orderings, each
The authors gratefully acknowledge the detailed comments from two anonymous IJSIM
referees; the usual caveat applies. They also thank the participants in the CEPEAD-UFMG
research seminar for their comments. Financial support from CNPq, the Brazilian national International Journal of Service
Industry Management,
research council, and from PAP/CAPES/ANPAD has been decisive to the accomplishment of Vol. 10 No. 5, 1999, pp. 487-504.
the original research project. # MCB University Press, 0956-4233
IJSIM involving a number of items far smaller than the total number of attributes.
10,5 The empirical analysis reported here may also serve to illustrate the method.
After this brief introduction, the conceptual framework that supports the
study is presented and the main aspects relating to the idea of weighing
attributes are exposed. The methodology is then described, particularly the
data collection, data analysis and hypothesis testing procedures, followed by
488 the main findings. In the last section some further aspects are discussed.
Methodology
Originally the PBZ conjecture has been stated in aggregate terms to imply that
the greater the importance of a given quality dimension, the thinner the
corresponding tolerance zone would be. As a matter of fact, Berry and
Parasuraman (1991) argue in terms of the five aggregate dimensions of quality
service which the original SERVQUAL model had identified since its first
versions. The idea behind the conjecture may be directly associated to the
nature of the two levels of expectations ± desired service and adequate service.
Admittedly customers' tolerance zones should vary for different attributes.
However, for a given attribute, whereas the desired level of service is of a more
stable nature, the adequate level is more open to temporary, transitory or
situational changes. For any customer, a fluctuation in the tolerance zone of an
attribute is more likely due to changes in the adequate level, which moves in
response to situational circumstances, than to movements in the desired level,
which moves incrementally in response to accumulated experience (Zeithaml Attribute
and Bitner, 1996, p. 81). Accordingly, those fluctuations may be compared to importance in
one-sided accordion gyration (p. 82). Upward movements in the adequate level service quality
are critical in the sense that, for a given attribute, the customer becomes less
tolerant and the service offer may fall outside the competitive zone, that is,
below the minimum expected level. In this sense, shrinking tolerance zones
may be revealing important attributes to be monitored if the firm wants to stay 491
in business.
The original inspiration to aggregate several individual attribute items into
a smaller number of dimensions was very likely linked to empirical
considerations and it goes on being discussed on those grounds (e.g. Mels et al.,
1997). Likewise, the same empirical origin may be invoked to motivate the
attributional approach adopted here. In fact, in terms of diagnostic power
(Parasuraman et al., 1994), it will be much easier for a manager to control
specific items than aggregate dimensions which, in questionnaire terms, are
very likely understood in plain English and therefore may have to be explained
to respondents. In addition, as argued by Callan (1997), in some service
contexts ± e.g. the hospitality sector ± providers are often audited and
accredited on an attribute item basis in order to determine whether current
classification and grading schemes indeed measure those attributes which the
consumers value most (p. 333). In other contexts ± e.g. hospital services,
catering ± aggregate dimensions have also served as a first step for defining
expanded, more specific lists of quality criteria (Reidenbach and Sandifer-
Smallwood, 1990, p. 48; Johns and Tyas, 1996, pp. 323-4).
Keeping these points in mind, it seemed quite natural to extend the original
PBZ conjecture to the case in which attribute items are individually considered,
which is what is taken up in this paper.
The research hypothesis to be tested here can be enunciated as:
H1: The importance of a service quality attribute is inversely associated to
the width of the corresponding tolerance zone: the more important the
attribute item, the thinner its tolerance zone.
This hypothesis corresponds to the following null hypothesis:
H0: There is no association between the order of importance of quality
attribute items and the width of the attributes' tolerance zones.
In statistical terms, this null hypothesis ± the one to be rejected ± can be tested
as a hypothesis of null correlation versus the unilateral alternative of negative
correlation, as stated in the original conjecture.
Figure 1.
Example of
three-column scale
format
procedure originally proposed by Leite (1996) in order to obtain the attribute Attribute
weights which will support the ordering of attributes by importance. This importance in
approach tries to avoid: service quality
. asking respondents to rate each dimension independently (cf. Zeithaml
et al., 1990, p. 26; Johns and Tyas, 1996, p. 322, 324);
. inferring the attribute weights from the weights of the aggregate, 493
underlying dimensions of service quality (cf. Zeithaml et al., 1990, p. 28);
and
. requesting the respondent to importance-rank all the 39 attribute items.
For the sake of clarity, the method will be briefly described.
In order to weigh the attribute items via their relative importance, an attribute
list much smaller than the original one should be created so that respondents
might accomplish the partial order. The list must be much smaller in order that
respondents might find it feasible ± both cognitively and emotively ± to order
all the elements in the partial subset of attributes. For example, a list of 38
attributes would produce a complete ordering yet it would be too big. A list
containing just one attribute ± meaning that the respondent would precisely
indicate the most important attribute ± would be much smaller but would
provide very limited information, meaning that the final weights would very
likely present many ties. This fact would render the complete ordering much
less immediate.
The procedure consists of requesting the respondent to rank, in order of
decreasing importance, the six most important attributes among the 39 listed in
the questionnaire. In Figure 2 an example shows the form whereby this
question was introduced in the survey. One possible justification for this
number may be found in the literature on choice among a number of products.
In fact, according to empirical findings reported by Hauser and Wernerfelt
(1990) (see also Lilien et al., 1992, pp. 67, 80), the mean or median size of the
consideration sets they analyzed across some 20 product categories ± that is,
the set of brands a consumer will evaluate or search for in a given purchase ±
ranges from two to eight brands. Considering that a purchase may arise more
interest than answering to a survey, it was judged that six was an adequate
size for the subset of attributes the respondents should be asked to rank in
order of importance.
For each attribute the number of votes is computed from the whole group of
respondents by successively considering the number of times the attribute was
indicated as the most important attribute, then as the second most important,
then as the third most important and so forth, until the number of responses
Figure 2.
Example of the
partial-ordering
question
IJSIM assigned to that attribute as the sixth most important. The number of votes a
10,5 given attribute obtained as the first most important attribute was assigned
weight 6, the number obtained as the second most important attribute received
weight 5, and so forth, until weight 1 was assigned to the amount
corresponding to the sixth most important place. If each attribute is cited by at
least one of the respondents in one of the six positions in the importance scale
494 (see Figure 2), then each attribute will have a positive number of votes assigned
to it. If some attribute does not appear in any of those positions, it will receive
zero votes; if this happens for all the attributes, each will receive zero votes and
the method will not apply. Admittedly this would be a very uninteresting list of
attributes.
How is it possible that each attribute will receive at least one vote? This is
surely an empirical question. However, if that was not the case, either the
situation would be uninteresting in the preceding sense or there would likely be
many ties. Note that even in the case where each attribute is cited by at least
one of the respondents in one of the six positions, there still remains the
problem of likely ties. The behavior of the method with respect to ties has been
studied by Carvalho and Leite (1998a).
Once the weighted sum of votes is computed for each attribute, a global
value is reached which is associated to the number 100. Therefore, taking the
weighted sums for each attribute, its weighted votes are reached
proportionately to the total weight of 100. In this way, the complete ranking of
the 39 attributes according to their relative importance was made possible. In
fact there occurred only one tie, corresponding to the value of the weighted
sums involving attributes classified in the 17th and 18th place. The criterion
adopted to break the tie was to find out the largest number of votes obtained by
each attribute when classified as the most important. In other words, the
amount of votes each tied attribute received as the most important was
checked. Again a tie occurred in this step. Then, the amount of votes each of the
two tied attributes received as the second most important attribute was
computed and it has then been possible to break the ties.
Previous work by Carvalho and Leite (1997, 1998a) has shown that this sort
of voting procedure is robust with respect to the order in which the attributes
appear in the questionnaire and that, in a specific sense, six is an appropriate
size of the smaller set to be totally ordered. These results may be viewed as an
indication of the (internal) consistency of the proposed weighing method.
Concerning the population to be studied, this research follows Leite (1996) as
he restricted his attention to firms using postal services rendered in public or in
franchised agencies. From this population the author selected a convenience
sample of 6,000 firms located in various regions throughout the Brazilian
territory and listed in a commercial databank called Dun's Cone Sul ± Guia de
NegoÂcios published by Dun and Bradstreet. This databank contains
information about some 17,000 organizations doing business in Cone Sul ± the
region formed by Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. According
to the publisher, those organizations may be considered the leading companies
in their respective business sectors; however, the publication does not elicit the Attribute
criteria adopted to qualify a listed company as a leader in its sector. For the importance in
purpose of his study Leite (1996) considered such information as being of little service quality
relevance, since the posting volume or the postage expenses ± which he would
be collecting through his questionnaire ± would be more important than other,
more general demographic data.
From the initial sample 122 organizations were eliminated, for they were 495
considered unlikely to be important as postal service users, for example, quarry
companies. The final sample comprised 5,878 firms to which letters of
institutional support from a metropolitan public university were sent, letting
them know about the overall study as well as about the research instrument. In
fact, since the purpose of the study required that the whole Brazilian territory
would be surveyed regarding the quality of national postal services, the mail
survey was considered the most adequate method of primary data collection.
Studies of an identical nature ± i.e. employing mail surveys for data collection ±
are found in the service literature (e.g. Parasuraman et al., 1994).
About 10 per cent (540) of mailed questionnaires were returned and were
considered valid under the research objectives. The actual sample has been
controlled ex post in terms of size and industrial classification; no significant
biases have been detected. Although the number of replies cannot be
considered high, three reasons can be invoked to support accepting them as
final. First, it was a national sample covering an almost continental territory,
where very different firm profiles prevail regionally. Second, the research
budget was quite binding, so that both time and money costs would hardly be
bypassed by the potential benefits resulting from the follow up of non-
responses. Third, this study may be considered as a first step into testing the
conjecture and it will need much more improvement. Even though the present
research is not exploratory in the usual sense, it is surely preliminary in
scope.
Hypothesis test
The test to be applied here will make use of the correlation coefficients between
the widths of the tolerance zones for each of the 39 attribute items and their
respective weights as computed according to the weighing procedure
previously explained.
Both Spearman correlation and Pearson correlation coefficients will be
employed to test the association between importance (weights) and tolerance
(widths). This double test was preferred because ranking is an operation that is
more resistant to errors (e.g. measurement errors) than the numerical values
representing the weights. Also, the test for the coefficient of rank correlation
does not depend on any hypothesis about the distribution of the two variables
involved and is even preferable for small samples. Specifically, Pearson
correlation will make use of two numerical variables: the weights computed
from the application of the previous weighing method and the widths
computed as difference of expectation average scores. To compute Spearman
IJSIM correlation coefficients two ordinal variables will be employed, namely, the
10,5 respective ranks corresponding to each of the preceding numerical variables. In
other words, the ranks to be correlated are those originated by the computed
weights and those generated by ordering the tolerance widths.
Either for Pearson or for Spearman coefficients, in order to determine
significance levels it will suffice to consider a unilateral test (r 0 versus
496 r < 0), as suggested in the original PBZ conjecture.
Regression analysis
According to Phlips and Blomme (1973), who use the expression descriptive
approach, regression analysis may be applied even when the estimated
equation is regarded as a purely numerical result though optimally fitted in
the least-squares sense. In such cases regression coefficients are purely
descriptive parameters with no necessary link with some econometrically
testable theory.
In addition, Wittink (1988) stresses the importance of inspecting the
residuals of an estimated equation with the objective of exploring any
remaining systematic patterns in the behavior of the dependent variable, and
much more so in a descriptive as opposed to an explanatory model. In fact, in a
descriptive framework ± as it is the case in many forecasting applications ± one
is much freer to provide ad hoc explanations on how the dependent variable
behaves.
In this paper regression equations are employed under a descriptive
approach and their residuals are explored to learn further about the association
tested.
Results
Research findings will be presented in two parts. The first part contains mostly
descriptive results corresponding to attribute weighing; in the second part
appear the results of hypothesis testing.
Notes: a Weights obtained from the proposed method; b ranks corresponding to the
Table II. computed values for weights appearing in the second column; c width of the tolerance zones
Attributes of postal averaged over respondents; d ranks corresponding to the computed values for widths
service quality in appearing in the fourth column
decreasing order of
importance Source: Survey results
Correlation analysis Attribute
In order to accomplish the objective of the paper ± namely, to test for the importance in
existence of an inverse association between tolerance and importance of quality service quality
attributes of postal services ± the hypothesis will be tested via correlation
coefficients. To estimate the correlation coefficients among the convenient pairs
of variables, the values appearing in Table II were utilized and computations
were completed as explained in the methodology section. 499
The value obtained for the Pearson correlation coefficient resulted from
correlating the variables expressed in the second and fourth columns in Table
II and equalled ±0.6056 ( p < 0:01). The value estimated for the Spearman
correlation coefficient was obtained by correlating the ordinal variables
expressed in the third and fifth columns of Table II and equalled ±0.6005 with
p < 0:01. These negative values are consistently close and indicate that the null
hypothesis be rejected, or equivalently that the alternative hypothesis H1 be
accepted. In other words, there is an inverse association between importance
and tolerance of service quality attributes. These results are summarized in
Table III.
Regression analysis
In spite of the test's significance, the values obtained for the correlation
coefficients were not as high as might have been expected. Therefore, through
the so-called descriptive approach to regression, a simple equation linking
importance and tolerance was estimated via ordinary least squares. A fitted
equation allows the residuals of the estimated equation to be analyzed, which
fits the purpose of the paper, namely, knowing how well importance-ranking,
far more difficult to obtain in practice, can be approached by means of
tolerance-ranking, whose computation is of a more direct and simple nature.
In all the equations specified to test the inverse form of the association, the
results were very good, with adjusted R2 values varying between 0.319 and
0.378, and all F values significant with p 0:01.
To further learn about the association, two equations were chosen which
gave, simultaneously, significant coefficients ( p 0:01) and higher values for
the adjusted R2 . The results for these two equations are reported in Table IV.
The residuals corresponding to these two specifications indicate that the
estimated deviations still present some structure, that is, some systematic
behavior. In fact, the plots corresponding to both equations suggest that the
errors increase with the weights, i.e. the greater the weight (i.e., the calculated
importance) of the attribute, the bigger (and the more positive) the error due to
Pearson correlation ±0.6056 p < 0:01 Significant inverse association Table III.
Spearman correlation ±0.6005 p < 0:01 Significant inverse association Correlation results:
weights correlated to
Note: Weight is the second column in Table II; width appears in the fourth column width
IJSIM utilizing the width to approximate the weight. In other words, the widths
10,5 overestimate the importance of the most important attributes. However, when
the observations corresponding to the five biggest weights are eliminated, the
residuals become distributed (around the zero average) as expected. In practical
applications overestimating might be seen as a conservative, more secure result
that could be acceptable in some service contexts.
500
Limitations
The research presents some limitations that deserve mention. First, observed
units are organizations, which suggests that respondents may have a quite
different attitude towards the process of communication via questionnaire vis aÁ
vis the communicating attitudes of individual respondents. Second, in terms of
purchase process characteristics, many organizations are served by the
employees they send to the postal outlet, in contrast to individual customers, who
buy postal services for themselves. Therefore, respondents may have only a
limited perception about, say, physical aspects of the service they receive (Leite,
1996). Third, following the argument by Rosen and Karwan (1994) as against
generic importance in terms of aggregate quality dimensions, both the type of
service and the service firms' characteristics do influence perceived importance.
In this paper a unique type of service was considered for which, in fact, the
prevailing market structure has been very close, when not fully coincident, to a
monopoly, at least as far as service delivery (at the agencies) is concerned.
Fourth, although the ex post control has depicted an acceptable profile for actual
respondents, no check concerning nonresponse bias has been tried. Fifth, to
compute the width of the tolerance zone, for each attribute, an average has been
calculated over respondents in the sample, despite the fact that averaging enjoys
many but not all the desirable properties as a sample summary. Alternatively,
however, had medians (or even some other order statistics) been employed much
more ties might have occurred. For the moment it is not clear how to choose a
summary measure with the best properties. Finally, both the definition of
attribute weights and the choice of the size of the list of items and of the (much
smaller) list of most important attributes are apparently very particular. For
example, it is assumed here that the 39 recorded attributes represent exactly all it
Methodological implications
In terms of survey applications additional implications of the results still
deserve attention. First the SERVQUAL questionnaire in its three-column
format presents an additional, attractive feature, namely, that it allows for
direct computation of the tolerance zones' widths per attribute. Second, since
individual attribute items are so vital for the results, special attention should be
paid to performing a qualitative stage where quality attribute items might be
considered and listed in detail. Third, the significant inverse association
IJSIM accepted here implies that, under the announced restrictions, it should be
10,5 possible to employ width ranking as if it was importance ranking. In some
application contexts, where time or cognitive constraints are binding, it will be
possible to obtain orders of importance in a much more simple and direct way.
Finally, additional research ± with data covering other types of service and/or
explicitly looking for different demographic segments ± is needed in order to
502 sharpen the results obtained here, particularly with respect to weight
overestimation.
In order to be able to rank attribute items, it has been necessary to
empirically determine numerical values that could be interpreted as importance
figures. A new method for weighing the quality items has been proposed
elsewhere and applied here to data collected in a quality service survey of
postal agencies in Brazil. The method shows how to start from reported relative
importance of just six among the total list of items in order to rank all the
attributes by incurring only a very small number of ties. This paper is also an
illustration of how the method operates.
A final methodological point may be raised. As it was mentioned before,
although the original conjecture has been expressed in aggregate terms, the test
performed here deals with attribute items. Empirically speaking, depending on
which operation is performed on numerical responses, a more than
unidimensional construct may result. For example, by factor-analyzing the
differences ideal less received service level, Parasuraman et al. (1985) found five
(aggregate) dimensions. However, as pointed out by Mels et al. (1997), various
dimensions ± from one up to seven or eight ± have been found for essentially
the same operation, i.e. ideal less expected level (see also Dabholkar et al., 1996).
What about the difference between two expected service levels, which supports
the tolerance width construct? Research in progress (Carvalho and Leite,
1998b), employing exploratory factor analysis and alpha-reliability, encourages
the researchers to believe that such an operation truly engenders a
unidimensional construct. All these considerations encourage the approach by
quality items, which makes concrete sense for respondents in diverse quality
management contexts.
Managerial implications
To complete the present discussion, two implications of interest for managers
involved in service quality research are worth mentioning. First, if managers
intend to use surveys to get information about the relative importance of
service quality attributes, then applying the three-column versions of the
SERVQUAL instrument will provide them with an easy way to collect that
kind of data. Of course, other relevant information will result from using that
instrument. In this way one may expect to increase managers' interest in
applying research to support service quality decisions, even in contexts where
cultural traits defy quantitative research.
Second, since the empirical results directly depend on the individual items
whereby service quality is perceived, very careful statements defining the
individual attributes will be needed to develop the questionnaire. Accordingly, Attribute
managers should pay special attention to the role of qualitative research in that importance in
respect. In particular, this will require managers to support a survey design service quality
which stimulates an intense participation of people involved with the service as
well as those likely to possess a specific, thorough knowledge of service
characteristics. Service marketing teams, customer service executives and
branch managers will surely be instrumental along the whole research project. 503
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