Service quality has become one of the key aspects among other factors that contribute to business growth and leading position in the business environment with mass competition. Service quality also plays a significant role in service sectors since due to its untouchable nature the features cannot be spelled out for consumers to directly make judgment before decisions are made.  In order for businesses to improve and maintain a better positioning in the competitive era, it is necessary to evaluate the performance of the services rendered to their customers. In recent times, service provider companies spend a great deal of time and money in configuring high quality services to satisfy their customers. Satisfied customers in most cases are likely to become loyal to companies. Customer satisfaction can be evaluated through an assessment of the quality of service delivered by the service provider to their customers and the level of service quality can also be measured considering customers‟ expectations and perceptions.  Purpose: This study is aimed to apply the SERVQUAL instrument in assessing patients (students of Umea University) perceptions of service quality and the level of satisfaction obtained from the services rendered by the Norrlands Universitets sjukhuset. Method: The convenience sampling technique was used to obtain data from the chosen population to enable an evaluation of perceptions of service quality at the Norrlands Universitets Sjukhuset. Findings and Conclusion: The factor analysis was used to analyze finding and test validity. Meanwhile the Cronbach Alpha enabled the determination of internal consistency and reliability. The gap score between perceptions and expectations was also deliberated. Results show that items from the same dimensions fall under more than one component. Although the other dimensions had a single factor, items from one dimension are not regrouped under the same factor but are affected by the different factors except for the Empathy dimension that was grouped correctly, but Empathy dimension alone is not sufficient to determine the extent of validity of the instrument applied. In this study the overall reliability coefficient is 0,933 more than 0.9 being the standard coefficient indicating an acceptable level of internal consistency. In conclusion patients from a chosen sample size of 201 students at the NUS expressed higher expectations than what they perceived in four dimensions and expressed satisfaction in one dimension. Result shows that in all the dimensions customers‟ expectations were higher than perceptions except the dimension of tangibility score implying that although people expect quite much from the hospital they expressed a satisfactory level on the Tangibility dimension (physical facilities, equipment and appearance of personnel). This study contributes to the already prevailing knowledge and studies that have explored both the concept of service quality and customer satisfaction in the health care service sector with the help of the SERVQUAL instrument. The empirical results from this study can also help in guiding managerial operations in the health care service sectors.

The e-commerce is growing among customers and also the companies are more active online. One industry that focuses on customer experience is the online fashion industry. In Sweden, the half of the population has at some time shopped clothes and footwear online. However, for companies to compete against others and to survive in this crowded market, it is important to create e-loyalty. Thereby, the purpose for this study was to evaluate the antecedents of e-loyalty in the online fashion industry. E-loyalty is according to famous researchers one important ingredient to succeed online and stay profitable. Other important ingredients for e-loyalty are e-satisfaction, e-trust and e-service quality. All of these factors have been investigated and evaluate in which degree they affect e-loyalty.   In this master thesis, assessed 212 respondents included in the population. The findings have been tested by following statistical analysis; reliability test, exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis. The result showed that e-satisfaction is the main driver for e-loyalty in the online fashion industry. Thereby, a manager should put main focus in what affect e-satisfaction to increase in e-loyalty in this industry. However, the result from the investigation also stressed an interesting factor, namely responsiveness. This factor was shown to have a significant influence on e-loyalty but also on e-satisfaction and e-trust.

IS quality is an important concept. Basing their model on information communication theory, DeLone and McLean formulated Information Quality and System Quality as two quintessential elements in their 1992 IS Success Model. In recent years, DeLone and McLean (2003) added Service Quality to form a triumvirate of antecedents to success. Unfortunately, the addition of this construct has unintentionally uncovered an overall lack of coherence in the theoretical modeling of IS Success. Research to date on IS Service Quality has largely ignored the impacts of Information Quality and System Quality when service is delivered through an information system (IS). We believe deeper theoretical insights are needed to reconceptualize Service Quality and rationalize IS quality. After reviewing related literature, we apply marketing exchange theory as a reference framework to redefine service related terms and identify possible scenarios of delivering service through systems. Thereafter, we model IS quality in a new way, based on analysis of alternative scenarios. In validating our proposed model, we discuss our research methods and data analysis that will serve as empirical evidence. In particular, we focus on content validity, construct validity, nomological validity, and unidimensionality of the three IS quality dimensions: System Quality, Information Quality, and Service Quality. By furthering our understanding of IS quality, we hope to initiate coherent theory development; this exercise should then lead to a theory that integrates IS quality elements and helps organizations implement effective strategies for using IS to deliver service. Through the empirical validation of IS quality model, we contribute an empirical assessment of content, construct, and nomological validity of the IS quality constructs, as proposed by DeLone and McLean in their 2003 updated IS success model.

The customer‘s standard of living and consciousness is demanding the importance of service quality. Service quality is mandatory to provide added value to the customers, retain and make loyal customers. This paper focuses on the customer expectation, customer perception and the gap between customer expectation and perception to measure the service quality. We have analyzed the service quality which has a great impact on customer satisfaction.

Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCO), state owned monopoly that generates, transmits, and distributes and sales electric power nationwide, has been undergoing various continued utility management practices. One of the major improvements, as part of the transformation, was the introduction of Prepayment (Metering) System, over that of the conventional metering service, which had been forcing the Corporation to follow lengthy service processes, in order to support the realization of its long term strategic vision of providing quality electric service and being competitive in an energy export. However, despite the introduction of this new type of service-prepayment customer service, the Corporation has not been able to attract more than only about five percent out of the two million total customers. Therefore, this study tried to assess and analyze the existing practice (quality) of prepayment customer service both from the employee and the Corporation’s perspectives, and thereby propose possible marketing strategies that are capable of improving the customer service quality for the subsequent adoption of prepayment service. SERVQUAL, as a methodological approach to service quality measures, was employed to measure the prepayment service quality by comparing customers’ perception of the received service against their expectations. Accordingly, the study revealed, despite its limitations, that there has been a substantial gap between customers’ expectations and perception of the service rendered, for which different possible marketing strategies were suggested for improvement.

Service quality and customer satisfaction are important concepts to grocery industry.  It is therefore important for companies to know how to measure this construct of expectations and perceptions because consumers’ expectations of service quality are increasing and people are becoming more and more critical of the quality of service they experience. The service quality model SERVQUAL is discussed in this study and how it can be applied in the context of grocery stores. The data in use were gathered from consumers in a southern Swedish town, called Växjö and the goal was to measure their expectations and perceptions of the services provided to them. After going through a significant number of articles and literature, the SERVQUAL model was altered by adding more variables (products, location, and waiting time) to its five dimensions. The aim was to find out if consumers are satisfied with the services been provided to them by grocery stores. Purpose – The purpose of the paper was to identify the dimensions influencing consumers’ perceived service quality in the grocery retailing. Method/approach – Using a sample of 200 respondents, a self-completion questionnaire was given out to consumers in Växjö, to determine their expectations and perceptions of service quality in grocery stores. Findings – The results show that expectations exceeded perceptions, denoting gaps in service quality, which means that grocery stores do not provide the level of service demanded by customers. This entails that customer satisfaction is rather low and that there is still room for grocery stores to improve on their performance. Managerial implications – The findings show that the SERVQUAL model can be a very useful instrument in measuring service quality in grocery stores. The additional variables proposed show a strong correlation to customer satisfaction, with products and waiting time being of high importance to overall service quality. Managers can use this tool to understand how customers assess service quality in grocery stores and in turn enhance their service experience. Originality/value – We introduce three new variables in the SERVQUAL model which, we believe, complete the assessment of service quality in the context of grocery stores.

Bakgrund och problematisering: Tjänsteföretag på konkurrensutsatta marknader motiveras att anpassa sina produkter utifrån kundernas efterfrågan där utvärdering och förbättring av en tjänsts kvalitet är ett tillvägagångsätt. Fallföretaget Vindsurfing.se studeras med en problembakgrund baserad på hur företag kan utvärdera kvalitet i sina tjänster och vilka positiva och negativa faktorer i produktionen av tjänsterna som går att identifiera utifrån kundernas uppfattningar. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka den av konsumenterna upplevda kvaliteten på de nybörjarkurser som företaget Vindsurfing.se erbjuder. Detta för att identifiera olika faktorer med påverkan på kvaliteten som kan ligga till grund för utredning av hur verksamheten kan utvecklas i framtiden. Teori och modell: Litteraturgenomgång med utgångspunkt i begreppet service quality, dess definition, tillämpningar och mätinstrument. Nyckelmodeller är bl.a. Grönroos (1984) ”Service-Quality Model” och Parasuraman et al., (1985) ”Service-Gap-model”. Genomgången leder till en egen modell föreställande studiens teoretiska ramverk anpassad för fallföretaget. Metod: Elektronisk enkätundersökning av fallföretagets befintliga kunder. Enkätundersökningen är kopplad till ett antal hypoteser formulerade med stöd av litteraturgenomgången. Frågor ställdes om kursupplevelsen och i vilken grad förväntningar motsvarats eller ej. Enkätsvaren ligger senare till grund för en analytisk hypotesprövning som därefter diskuteras genom att ställa resultaten i förhållande till teorin. Resultat och slutsatser: Resultaten presenterar upptäckter om hur olika faktorer med påverkan på tjänsternas kvalitet visat sig bidra på olika sätt till det totala omdömet av kvaliteten. Analys av externa faktorer och demografiska uppgifter från enkätrespondenter leder till slutsatser av dess påverkan. Slutsatserna från undersökningen bidrar till en möjlighet till utvärdering av framtida verksamhets-utformning för fallföretaget och en generaliserande slutdiskussion diskuterar det vetenskapliga bidraget av

The government serves must keep pace with the times, can draw close to populace's idea, meets populace's need. This study, which aims to investigate the satisfaction level of fishermen towards the public service of the Southern Coastal Patrol Office of the Coast Guard Administration on the five dimensions of PZB Gaps Model of service quality. Six suggestions based on the aforementioned results are proposed in the study as references for Coast Guard authorities to carry out an overall review,enabling the advantage coastal patrol services to create a bigger public interest, and the fisherman feel the coastal patrol institution's innovation and the progress.

Abstract Dental implants can be a breakthrough in dental treatment. It has become an important index of the operation performance for the dental clinics. Patients¡¦ knowledge of dental implant medical quality is different from dentists¡¦ due to asymmetric information. This study sample consists of two major groups: 200 patients and 20 dentists, recruited from 15 dental clinics providing services of dental implants in Kaohsiung city. The data was collected by a questionnaire and try to investigate the relationship between the baseline data , the knowledge and attitude of patients about dental implants. The purposes of this study is to identify the difference between patients and dentists about dental implant medical quality . Providing information for patients seeking dental implant care, and for dental implant marketing of dental clinics. The results show that the willingness to accept dental implants is higher in patients well-educated and good oral hygiene . The most popular resources of getting dental implant information are from TV and their dentists. 74% of patients do not know the brand of their dental implants. 84.2% of patients would like to recommend dental implants with the reasons of their dental experiences and the trust of the dentists. The satisfaction rate of dental implant exceeds 70%. As for selecting dentists, medical skills, medical ethics, medical equipments and public praise are the more important factors. Male and young patients are more affected by objective factors; female patients take more consideration of their own feelings. However old patients more concern about interpersonal relationship. Highly-educated patients attach more importance of profession; Lowly-educated patients more care about the environment of the clinics. About medical quality, the most important factors in dentists are medical skills and sterilization, followed by dentist-patients relationship. The first three in patients are medical skills, sterilization and specialist certification. Of all six common factors in patients and dentists, the most different factor is dentist-patient relationship. It shows obviously high in dentists, and it maybe due to the elevation of consumer¡¦s awareness in Taiwan. Key word: dental implant, dental service quality , dental clinic choice, factor analysis

With the trend of financial business integration, the life insurance companies face keen market competition. They are forced to develop multiple channels since the agency channel which was the main distribution channel can not stay competitive in the market. In 2009, 63.15% of first-year premium collections on life insurance products come from the bancassurance channel and 33.85% are from the agency channel. However, life insurance products are intangible and agents play significant roles during service delivery in order to meet various customers¡¦ need. This is why most life companies still choose to strengthen the agency channel. Thus, it merits a better attention to probe into the relationships between life companies and their agents. The study is conducted by the questionnaire survey on F Life Insurance Company. Throughout interviewing 509 agents and 200 customers, the datum of the research is made by reliability analysis, descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, independent sample t-test, ANOVA, and multiple regression analysis to verify the identity degrees of the interviewees on the organizational commitment, the professional commitment, the organizational citizenship behavior, and the service quality. Following are the major findings: 1. Each one of the organizational commitment, the professional commitment, and the organizational citizenship behavior are statistically significant and positive correlated to the service quality. Among them, the organizational citizenship behavior is with the strongest influence on the service quality, then the professional commitment second, and the organizational commitment last. 2. Among the sub-dimensions, the continuance commitment in the organizational commitment explains most the variations of the service quality. Also, the professional involvement in the professional commitment explains most the one. And, the participation in the organizational citizenship behavior explains the most the one and then the service delivery. It means that the professional involvement and the participation of the agents are with significant effects on the service quality. 3. The variations in the identity degrees of the service quality of the agents and the customers are significantly different. 4. The variations in the identity degrees of the organizational commitment of the different agency channel are significantly different. From the findings of the research, the organizational citizenship behavior is proven the most impacts on the service quality and the professional commitment influences the organizational citizenship behavior more than the organizational commitment. Consequently, the life companies should invest more training resources to upgrade agents¡¦ professional capability except for enhancing the organizational identification of agents. Professional agents are more confident of selling and delivering service, and perform organizational citizenship behavior better, so that earn customers¡¦ trust and improve service quality. Ultimately, it creates irreplaceable value of the agency channel.