An Overview of the SERVQUAL Instrument

The SERVQUAL instrument developed by Parasuraman et al. (1988) has been outlined in many papers in recent years and has been used in many areas, including the hospitality industry, to assess customer perceptions of service quality in service organizations (Babakus & Boller, 1992; Heung et al., 2000; Kang, 2006; Saleh & Ryan, 1991; Seidman, 2001).

The SERVQUAL instrument was based on the disconfirmation paradigm used originally to evaluate the level of customer satisfaction. The disconfirmation paradigm suggests that a customer’s satisfaction level towards a product or service depends on the level of disconfirmation which ranges from negative disconfirmation, confirmation, to positive disconfirmation. Negative disconfirmation occurs when the performance of the product or service is lower than a customer’s expectation resulting in customer dissatisfaction. Confirmation occurs when the performance of the product or service evenly matches a customer’s expectation which may lead to either customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Positive disconfirmation occurs when the performance of the product or service exceeds a customer’s expectation (Churchill & Surprenant, 1982).

Subsequent studies in a variety of service settings suggested that the SERVQUAL instrument possessed certain limitations. Cronin and Taylor (1992), Babakus and Boller (1992) and Carman (1990) were among the earliest researchers to report the replication and testing of the SERVQUAL instrument and offered suggestions. The central issues involved in measuring service quality employing the SERVQUAL instrument have been well documented by several academics (Babakus & Boller, 1992; Brown, Churchill, & Peter, 1993; Buttle, 1996; Carman, 1990; Cronin & Taylor, 1994; Teas, 1993) especially in the operationalization of the SERVQUAL instrument and the five dimensions of SERVQUAL. The following subsections review the criticisms of the SERVQUAL Instrument.

2.2.1.1The Dimensions of SERVQUAL

Parasuraman et al. (1988) claimed that the five SERVQUAL dimensions were a concise representation of the core criteria that customers employ in evaluating service quality. In addition, the authors maintained that the five dimensions of SERVQUAL are applicable across a broad spectrum of service industries. Nevertheless, the findings of several studies do not agree with this contention (see: Babakus & Boller, 1992; Brown et al., 1993; Buttle, 1996; Carman, 1990; Cronin & Taylor, 1992; Kueh & Boo, 2007).

Numerous replication studies such as Brown et al. (1993), Babakus and Boller (1992) and Carman (1990) adopted the SERVQUAL instrument and their findings failed to confirm the five dimensions of SERVQUAL. For example, Carman (1990) adopted the SERVQUAL instrument to measure service quality in four service industries (dental school patient clinic, business school placement centre, tyre store and acute care hospital) and found that the SERVQUAL instrument was limited in its application: the five dimensions of the SERVQUAL instrument were not completely generic across these four service industries leading to the suggestion that modifications to the measured items and wordings were necessary to accommodate the service industry under investigation. Babakus and Boller (1992) raised questions about the suitability of the SERVQUAL instrument for measuring service quality in a wide range of services and concluded that it is inappropriate to use SERVQUAL as a standard measurement scale for all services; they recommended that measurements should be designed for specific service industries. In addition, Brown et al. (1993) doubted whether the SERVQUAL instrument used to measure service quality could be universally applicable to all service industries because many measured items were missing.

Many academics in the foodservice industry have applied the SERVQUAL instrument to assess service quality, including full service restaurants (Bojanic & Rosen, 1994; Kueh & Boo, 2007; Lee & Hing, 1995; Tucci & Talaga, 2000), pizza delivery (Richard et al., 1994), industrial foodservice restaurants (Johns & Tyas, 1996), family-style restaurants (Fu & Parks, 2001) and airport restaurants (Heung et al., 2000). Based on a review of the literature, there has been much debate over service quality construct in the foodservice industry when the construct is measured using the SERVQUAL instrument. For example, like the findings of Babakus and Boller (1992) and Carman (1990), Tucci and Talaga (2000) and Johns and Tyas (1996) also raised doubts that the SERVQUAL instrument could be used effectively in any or all foodservice settings. These authors claimed that since each type of restaurant faced a different set of patrons, the instrument must reflect the unique evaluative criteria used by these patrons. In addition, Sulek and Hensley (2004) intended to use the SERVQUAL instrument in their study but it did not meet the restaurant manager’s needs because the questions were too long and too general and did not capture critical characteristics of a restaurant’s service. Similar case was happen in the study in fast food restaurants in Delhi, Jain and Gupta (2004) employed SERVQUAL instrument; they observed that many respondents hesitated to fill it up the questionnaire and returned it on the spot when they saw the lengthy questionnaire.

Furthermore, Johns and Tyas (1996) and Namkung and Jang (2007) noted that when food items were included in the SERVQUAL instrument, they were unable to clearly obtain factor patterns and the results factored differently from Parasuraman et al. (1988). Several researchers (Johns & Tyas, 1996; Namkung & Jang, 2007; Sulek & Hensley, 2004; Tucci & Talaga, 2000), recommended that the SERVQUAL instrument needed to be applied with caution and concluded that a more appropriate measurement was needed to measure service quality in the foodservice industry.

2.2.1.2The Operationalization of the SERVQUAL Instrument

The original SERVQUAL instrument consisted of 22 pairs of items to measure the gap between what the customers think should be provided and what they think actually has been provided. The SERVQUAL instrument analyses the level of service quality by evaluating the gaps between customers’ expectations and perceptions of a service and the actual service performance. A positive gap occurs when the customers’ perceptions exceed their expectations. A negative gap occurs when customers’ expectations are not met.

Respondents must complete the entire SERVQUAL instrument based on their expectations and perceptions of the actual service received. In addition, completing the SERVQUAL instrument may be difficult, especially in service areas where many customers are first- time visitors and their expectations are not realistic. Some customers have difficulty in differentiating many of the measured items in the SERVQUAL instrument and it is sometimes impractical to ask customers about their expectations before consumption and then again immediately after consumption (Bozorgi, 2006; Carman, 1990; Fu & Parks, 2001; Kouthouris & Alexandris, 2005).

In responding to these criticisms, Parasuraman et al. (1991) conducted another study that employed the original SERVQUAL instrument. However, their findings failed to support the original five dimensions of the SERVQUAL instrument identified in Parasuraman et al. (1988) earlier study. The substantial overlaps between the responsiveness and assurance factors were detected in the five-factor structure (Parasuraman et al., 1991). In order to improve the SERVQUAL instrument and to verify its applicability, Parasuraman et al. (1991) refined the instrument and claimed that the key to providing superior service is understanding and responding to customer expectations; the authors study eliminated the negatively expressed items, replaced two confusing items with non-redundant alternatives and added importance weights to the measurement process. Notwithstanding that, their findings did not support the usefulness of the expectation items of the SERVQUAL instrument, consistent with their 1988 study. Further, Parasuraman et al. (1991) recommended measuring service quality only in terms of performance.

Despite the original SERVQUAL instrument having undergone several modifications and refinements over a period of years (Parasuraman et al., 1991; Parasuraman, Berry, & Zeithaml, 1994), the SERVQUAL instrument continues to display a lack of consistency in replicating the dimensions in different service environments. Academics in the service marketing field (Babakus & Boller, 1992; Brady & Cronin, 2001; Brown et al., 1993; Carman, 1990; Cronin & Taylor, 1992, 1994; Llosa, Chandon, & Orsingher, 1998; Teas, 1993; Van Dyke, Kappelman, & Prybutok, 1997) have raised criticisms and questioned the appropriateness of using the SERVQUAL instrument to measure service quality in service industries. These criticisms led to the development of alternative instruments (such as SERVPERF and DINESERVE) and models to measure customer perceptions of service quality.