The socially responsible customer segment is growing. Increasingly, customers are concerned about social, political, and environmental issues. These concerns have been shown to affect their attitudes towards the quality of goods and services as well as their buying behaviors. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of empirical research in the service literature on socially responsible customers. This study investigates the role that social responsibility plays in measuring service quality. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used in this study. Focus group and in-depth interviews were conducted to develop a scale measuring the social responsibility dimension in the evaluation of service quality. Confirmatory factor analysis and a multiple regression method were then utilized to test four hypotheses postulated in the study. The social responsibility scale consisted of eight items and was shown to be highly reliable. This scale along with the 22 items from the perception part of SERVQUAL formed the Socially Responsible Customer (SRC) SERVQUAL instrument used in this study. A total of 803 respondents completed the survey. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that social responsibility was a salient dimension of service quality and highly socially responsible customers used the concept of social responsibility more pronouncedly than the others when evaluating service quality. The social responsibility dimension alone significantly explained the variance in service quality. However, after accounting for the existing five SERVQUAL dimensions, the social responsibility dimension does not add a significant increment to the variance explained by the service quality regression model. / Ph. D.

O presente trabalho consistiu em identificar e avaliar a percepção dos clientes (alunos) sobre os serviços prestados pela Universidade de Caxias do Sul (UCS), através da identificação dos atributos que impactam na sua satisfação e de dimensões, ou fatores, relacionados à qualidade, que podem ser sugeridos na busca de um diferencial competitivo nos cursos de pós-graduação (lato sensu). A identificação dos atributos e, por conseguinte, das dimensões da qualidade relacionadas aos serviços prestados pode ajudar a Instituição a priorizar ações, considerando a percepção dos alunos, no sentido de elevar a qualidade dos serviços, contribuindo para a excelência na educação, além de estimular a retenção de clientes (alunos) e consolidar seu posicionamento de mercado. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida em duas fases: uma qualitativa, sendo por meio de entrevistas individuais em profundidade, e outra quantitativa, com a aplicação de um questionário estruturado que para a análise dos dados foram utilizadas técnicas estatísticas multivariadas. Os resultados obtidos evidenciaram o grau de satisfação dos alunos, o que permitiu identificar as dimensões da qualidade dos serviços prestados, além de alguns direcionamentos para a IES. / Submitted by Marcelo Teixeira (mvteixeira@ucs.br) on 2014-05-22T16:29:13Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Luciene Eberle.pdf: 915397 bytes, checksum: e75e2f302419d3d6c90cd03bc4fb93c6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-05-22T16:29:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Luciene Eberle.pdf: 915397 bytes, checksum: e75e2f302419d3d6c90cd03bc4fb93c6 (MD5) / The present work consists in indentifying and evaluating customer´s perception (students) about the services of the University of Caxias do Sul (UCS), through the identification of the attributes that have an impact on their satisfaction and the dimensions and factors related to quality, which can be suggested in the search for a competitive differential of the post-graduation courses (lato sensu). The identification of the attributes, and consecutively, of the dimensions of quality related to the offered services can help the institution to give priority to certain actions, considering the student´s perception, in order to increase the quality of the services, contributing the excellence within the educational field, besides stimulating the customer´s retention (students) and consolidating its market position. The research was developed in two phases: a qualitative one, involving in-depth interviews, and the quantitative one, involving structured questionnaires; the data analysis was made trough various statistical techniques and procedures. The results obtained clearly show the degree of student´s satisfaction, which allows the Institution to identify the dimensions of quality related to the offered services, besides pointing future directions to the IES.

O presente trabalho consistiu em identificar e avaliar a percepção dos clientes (alunos) sobre os serviços prestados pela Universidade de Caxias do Sul (UCS), através da identificação dos atributos que impactam na sua satisfação e de dimensões, ou fatores, relacionados à qualidade, que podem ser sugeridos na busca de um diferencial competitivo nos cursos de pós-graduação (lato sensu). A identificação dos atributos e, por conseguinte, das dimensões da qualidade relacionadas aos serviços prestados pode ajudar a Instituição a priorizar ações, considerando a percepção dos alunos, no sentido de elevar a qualidade dos serviços, contribuindo para a excelência na educação, além de estimular a retenção de clientes (alunos) e consolidar seu posicionamento de mercado. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida em duas fases: uma qualitativa, sendo por meio de entrevistas individuais em profundidade, e outra quantitativa, com a aplicação de um questionário estruturado que para a análise dos dados foram utilizadas técnicas estatísticas multivariadas. Os resultados obtidos evidenciaram o grau de satisfação dos alunos, o que permitiu identificar as dimensões da qualidade dos serviços prestados, além de alguns direcionamentos para a IES. / The present work consists in indentifying and evaluating customer´s perception (students) about the services of the University of Caxias do Sul (UCS), through the identification of the attributes that have an impact on their satisfaction and the dimensions and factors related to quality, which can be suggested in the search for a competitive differential of the post-graduation courses (lato sensu). The identification of the attributes, and consecutively, of the dimensions of quality related to the offered services can help the institution to give priority to certain actions, considering the student´s perception, in order to increase the quality of the services, contributing the excellence within the educational field, besides stimulating the customer´s retention (students) and consolidating its market position. The research was developed in two phases: a qualitative one, involving in-depth interviews, and the quantitative one, involving structured questionnaires; the data analysis was made trough various statistical techniques and procedures. The results obtained clearly show the degree of student´s satisfaction, which allows the Institution to identify the dimensions of quality related to the offered services, besides pointing future directions to the IES.

Bank leaders spend an average of $727 to acquire a new customer and $287 to retain current customers. Grounded in customer relationship management and adaptation level theories, the purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between service quality and customers' intention to switch banking service. An online survey was administered to 203 Jamaican banking customers. The target population was selected to identify if the Jamaican banks' customer service adhered to the customer satisfaction principles developed by Parasuraman. The independent variables were the 10 dimensions of service quality. Competence, courtesy, credibility, and access were removed because of multicollinearity issues. The dependent variable was the customers' intention. The results indicated a statistically significant relationship, F(6, 196) = 15.074, p < .001, between service quality and customer intent to switch banking services. The six predictors: tangibles (r = -.303, p < .005), reliability (r = -.253, p < .008), responsiveness (r = .35, p < .001), safety (r = -.433, p < .001), communication (r = -.184, p < .028), and empathy (r = -.357, p < .001), accounted the largest variance for (β = -.316) of the customers' intention of the Jamaican banking service. The implications for positive social change include the potential for bank leaders to develop customer-focused banking policy, increase customer satisfaction, and decrease costs related to losing customers, thus increasing profitability.

This study focuses on student support service quality with particular reference to an Open Distance Learning (ODL) environment. Taking student support services as anchors in mainstreaming ODL, the aims of the study are to develop an instrument that can accurately measure student support service quality in an Ethiopian ODL environment. Simultaneously, it is to investigate an alleged gap between students’ expectations and experiences of service quality in the Ethiopia-UNISA context. In doing so, an attempt is made to determine the students’ level of satisfaction with the student support services provided. The study relies on quantitative methods and a design-based research strategy, which involves iterative and step-by-step processes of investigation. The theoretical framework employed in this study is Gaps Model by Parasuraman, Ziethaml and Berry (1985). Using an instrument of which the possible level of external and internal validity has been ensured, data are collected and quantitatively analysed using a standard Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The data suggest that there are five dimensions that play a cardinal role in the measurement of student support service quality in an ODL context, namely supervision support, infrastructure, administrative support, academic facilitation and corporate image. In the Ethiopian context, there appears to be a discrepancy between students’ expectations and their experiences of the quality of student support services. More than often their expectations exceed their actual experiences of quality service provision. Students’ satisfaction levels are negatively affected by the quality of four of the support services provided by UNISA as measured through expectations and experiences. In contrast, the students’ responses show that they are highly satisfied with the corporate image UNISA holds both in Ethiopia and internationally. From among the five dimensions, however, corporate image and supervision support stand out to be the most important dimensions in contributing to the students’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively. As a recommendation, this study highlights that these two dimensions must be focal areas by UNISA as more effort must be exerted to build the image of UNISA in Ethiopia and to improve the supervision support provided to students. / Educational Leadership and Management / D. Ed. (Education Management)