A CONCEPTUAL STUDY ON THE APPLICATION OF SERVQUAL SCALE TO MEASURE THE SERVICE QUALITY IN SERVICE SECTORS

Abstract

As competition becomes more intense and environmental factors become more hostile, the concern for service quality grows. If service quality is to become the cornerstone of marketing strategy, the marketer must have the means to measure it. The most popular measure of service quality is SERVQUAL, developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry at Texas and North Carolina in 1985. It highlights the main requirements for delivering high service quality for customers in service sectors. It identifies the five gaps that cause unsuccessful delivery. It measures the gap between customer expectations and experience. The basic assumption of the measurement was that customers can evaluate a firm’s service quality by comparing their perceptions with their expectations.