Talk:Service quality

Myrtlegroggins (talk) 04:13, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

GA1

YaseminITÜ (talk) 21:57, 30 December 2010 (UTC)What else can I do, to make it a good article? Help is desired :)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Service quality/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Arctic Night 16:11, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I'm reviewing this one. I'll make some general comments before giving an adjudication at the end. Arctic Night 16:11, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Lead

• The first sentence needs to say what 'service quality' is, not what it involves or relates to. This article is not clear on exactly what it is in the first sentence.
• I'm not too flash hot on using 'according to...', but if you're going to do it, at least do it properly. Use quotation marks ("quote"), and reference the quote afterward.
• The lead needs some serious, serious work. We do not put bullet points in leads. The lead needs to be organised into paragraphs, not bullet point-like sentences.
• Leads typically do not require referencing, and everything that is in the lead should be found elsewhere in the article also. For some tips on constructing a lead, see WP:LEAD.

Definition

• This section needs a thorough copy-edit. One example of a sentence that needs to be fixed is "Service quality is a business administration's term..." - this is grammatically incorrect.
• This section needs to be organised into paragraphs. This means that the paragraphs that currently exist should be merged together, as a one- or two-sentence paragraph is definitely not acceptable in a Good Article.
• "...the concrete measurable conformity of a working result with the previous defined benefit..." - this reeks of jargon, and should be fixed. This applies to pretty much the whole definition section - think of whether the 'man on the street' would understand what this article is trying to say. The article, and especially this section, is full of business buzz words.

Criteria of service quality

• This section needs a thorough copy-edit. One example of a sentence that needs to be fixed is "word-of-mouth, personal needs and past experience create an expected service (Expectation of the service)." - why are there brackets here? Are the brackets necessary, and why is the first letter inside the brackets capitalised?
• "And leads to the perceived..." - sentences should not begin with the word 'and'.
• "Factors which influence the appearing of the gap were found by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry in 1985." - although as I said before, I am not a fan of directly stating which sources of authority are being used, a reference or link to the source needs to be used in this instance.
• "Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985) identified ten determinants of service quality..." - you said that already - this does not need to be stated twice.
• I'm not a fan of the bullet points. Does this section even need to exist at all? If it does, there is no need for such a long list of service quality determinants.
• "It has the same effect as the junk yard strategy..." - what is the 'junk yard strategy'? This needs to be explained, as coming from the 'man (or woman!) on the street' point of view, I have no idea.
• "and according to latest researches" -> 'research'.

Models of service quality

• We don't need to have links in the bullet points.
• Cite your sources! There is barely any citation in use in this section, and this needs to be fixed, whether or not the article progresses to Good Article status.
• Again, this section needs a good copy-edit. For example, "If they are not match each other..."
• "Keyfactors contributing to the gaps..." (key factors, by the way) - do we really need that long bullet point list for this one? I would say that it is unnecessary.

Approaches to improve service quality

• This section needs a thorough copy-edit. One example of a sentence that needs to be fixed is "And the folowing approches..." - spelling needs to be fixed here, coupled with the fact that sentences should not start with the word 'and'.
• I would say that this entire section should be turned into a short paragraph. The bullet point list is not needed.

Approaches to improve conformance quality

• References should come after the statement they support, not in the middle of them.

Realization

• At this point, the article begins to read like a textbook. While the 'five main service criteria' from before smacks of university business studies, the use of "So,..." as if to conclude the article sounds a lot like a textbook. This section also requires a brief copy-edit.

General comments

• The reference work in this article really needs to be improved. There are whole paragraphs without good references, and this needs to change, whether or not the article reaches Good Article status in the future.
• This entire article needs a good and thorough copy-edit. I understand that the article may have been written by someone whose English is not their first language, and editors would do well to have a copy-edit of this article conducted.

At present, I do not feel that this article has met the Good Article criteria. Editors with this feeling have two choices - to fail the article, or, if they feel that the article only needs a little bit of work to reach the criteria, put it on hold for seven days while editors fix the article up. I am of the opinion that a lot of work is required before this article, and will be unable to pass it at this time. Arctic Night 16:35, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Suggestions for improving the article on service quality

Definitions of service quality

It would be useful if the article provided a little more in the way of concrete definitions and background to the problem of defining service quality. Ideally the article should mention that there is widespread consensus amongst researchers and practitioners that service quality is an elusive and abstract concept that is difficult to define and measure. It is believed to be a multidimensional construct, but there is little consensus as to what consistutes the specific dimensions. Indeed some researchers argue that the dimensions of service quality may vary from industry to industry and that no universal set of dimensions exists for all situations.

Conceptualisations of service quality

This article mentions the so called gaps model (model developed by PZB and formally called the model of service quality, but popularly known as the gaps model or occasionally the PZB model) in several places. This approach conceptualises service quality having five dimensions namely reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness (See SERVQUAL for detailed definitions. There is no question that this is the dominant model for measuring service quality and diagnosing problems. Wikipedia already has an article devoted to SERVQUAL which provides a fair explanation of this model and the associated measurement scale SERVQUAL. In fact, the PZB approach is just one of a number of models or conceptualisations of service quality. The PZB approach is often regarded as the American approach. The lead section needs to reflect the notion that there are many different conceptualisations of service quality rather than settle on one single model.

To clarify the article and to provide superior context, some discussion could be given to alternative concepts of service quality. This would serve to differentiate this article from the article on SERVQUAL and also would be a good fit with the broader title of service quality. Ideally, the various conceptualisations of service quality would serve as an organising framework for this article.

In my view this article needs to consider broader conceptualisations of service quality including:

The Nordic School (aka the Nordic model) of service quality: (exemplified by the work of Christian Grönroos, 1984, 1986, 1990).

The Nordic school was one of the earliest attempts to define and measure service quality. The Nordic school defines service quality in terms of two broad aspects, namely of technical quality (what was delivered) and functional quality (how it was delivered). The technical dimension can usually be measured - but the functional dimension is difficult to measure due to subjective interpretations which vary from customer to customer.

Performance only model (devised by Cronin and Taylor, 1992)

Cronin and Taylor developed a scale based on perceived performance only (i.e. excluded expectations). The scale is known as SERVPERF - is shorter and easier to administer and correlates well with SERVQUAL. Some theorists treat this as a variant of the 'gaps model' while others view it as an entirely different conceptualisation of service quality (SQ = P)

The preceding approaches - Nordic, SQ= P-E and SQ= P all come from a marketing tradition. A comprehensive article on service quality should possibly pay some attention to approaches within the management/ operations management perspective, notably

Total Quality Management (TQM) exemplified by the work of W. Edward Deming. (See Total quality management and W. Edwards Deming

Errors of fact

This article, in its current form, has both conceptual errors, factual errors and errors of interpretation. Here is my summary of the worst errors that must be addressed as a high priority:

(a) What the article says: The opening sentence states that SQ is a contemporary conceptualisation based on P and E.

Issue to be addressed: For the reasons outlined in the preceding section, the preceding statement is not stricly correct. The P-E approach is based on the so-called expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm and is only ONE of a number of conceptualisations of service quality. There are other conceptualisations of service quality - as outlined in the preceding section.

(b) What the article says: The article makes explicit mention of the "RATER model"

Issue to be addressed: There is no such thing as the RATER model. RATER is simply a useful memnonic device used by students of marketing to remember the dimensions of service quality in the PZB model. Serious academic articles or texts never refer to the RATER model.

(c) What the article says: The article says "Measuring service quality may involve both subjective and objective processes. In both cases, it is often some aspect of customer satisfaction which is being assessed. However, customer satisfaction is an indirect measure of service quality."

Issue to be addressed: The relationship betwen satisfaction and service quality is confused in this article. The current understanding is that satisfaction is an antecedent to service quality. In other words, consumers may be satisfied or dissatisfied with an individual service encounter, but service quality is something that accrues over multiple transactions. Thus, service quality and satisfaction are different concepts, defined in different ways and therefore measured in different ways. A good article on service quality would not confuse satisfaction and SQ in this way.

(d) What the article says: The article claims that there are '10 dimensions of service quality. However, this claim is entirely inconsistent with the PZB model of service quality - which incidentally appears to be the main source for the article. According to the PZB model, the dimensions of service quality number 5 in total (i.e. RATER).

(e) I do not understand this determination by editors to add the qualifier, perceived to expectations as in perceived expectations. (This editing amendment is also occuring on the article on SERVQUAL and demonstrates a total misunderstanding of the model's basics. Prospective customers have expectations which they match with perceived performance. But prior to consumption, their expectations are simply their expectations - they are real - not perceived. In terms of empirical research, there are a number of different operational definitions of expectations, namely forecast, expectations, normative expectations, ideal expectations, predictive expectations etc., but the literature does not discuss perceived expectations.

Other issues to be addressed

Referencing problems many problems identified - incomplete bibliographic citations; lack of references for key points, incomprehensible words in article titles etc.

Expression - would benefit from an overhaul in terms of expression and grammar

Capitalisation - inconsistent use of capitals

The conceptual issues need to be addressed before trying to refine grammar and expression. (There's little point in making sentences read well if they are factually incorrect or contain errors of interpretation and need to be amended). If any editors feel like picking up one or more of these issues; here are a few key references to seminal articles in the field, organised around the three popular conceptualisations of service quality:

SERVPERF

Cronin, J. J. and Taylor, S. A., "Measuring Service Quality: A Re-examination and Extension," Journal of Marketing, Vol. 56, no. 3, 1992 pp 55-68.\

Cronin J.J., Steven, J. and Taylor, A., "SERVPERF versus SERVQUAL: Reconciling performance based and perceptions-minus-expectations measurement of service quality," Journal of Marketing, Vol. 58, January, 1994, pp. 125-131

NORDIC SCHOOL

Grönroos, C., "A service quality model and its marketing implications," European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 18, No. 4, 1984, 36–44. doi:10.1108/EUM0000000004784

Grönroos, C., Service Management and Marketing: Managing the Moments of Truth in Service Competition, Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, 1990

GAPS model

Parasuraman, A, Ziethaml, V. and Berry, L.L., "SERVQUAL: A Multiple- Item Scale for Measuring Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality' Journal of Retailing, Vo. 62, no. 1, 1988, pp 12-40 <online:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225083802_SERVQUAL_A_multiple-_Item_Scale_for_measuring_consumer_perceptions_of_service_quality>

Parasuraman, A., Berry, L.L. and Zeithaml, V.A., “Refinement and Reassessment of the SERVQUAL scale,” Journal of Retailing, Vol. 67, no. 4, 1991, pp 57-67

Zeithaml, V., Parasuraman, A. and Berry, L.L., Delivering Service Quality: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations, N.Y., The Free Press, 1990

Parasuraman, A., Berry, L.L., Zeithaml, V. A., "Understanding Customer Expectations of Service," Sloan Management Review, Vol. 32, no. 3, 1991, p. 39

And, there are a few images at Wiki commons that could be used to illustrate this article. See the following images (which will be displayed, but you can get the code to add to the article)

Measuring service quality using SERVQUAL model (Kumar et al, 2009)

Servqual

It would definitely be possible to get this to a good article status if these issues were addressed. It would also make it much more useful to students of marketing!

Here follows a couple of diagrams that could be integrated into the article:

BronHiggs (talk) 22:33, 1 January 2017 (UTC)