Understanding Customers' Expectations

Abstract

The chapter seeks to provide insight into service quality by illustrating influential models in service marketing discipline: SERVQUAL and GAP model. Moreover, the authors provide literature support of both SERVQUAL and GAP model by inducing their evolution, usage, and limitations. The authors undertook qualitative research on 10 SMEs to understand the gap between consumers' expectations and service delivery. The finding indicates experience economy as a mediating factor in minimizing gaps between expectations and behavior intention on consumers. Moreover, after conducting 30 documented observations of provider-customer interactions, it was also revealed that the role of empathy plays a vital part in moderating the components (dimensions) of service quality. The authors then provide a conceptual framework based on the results revealed. As the research was conducted via qualitative approach, the limitations of the study center around the small sample size used and lack of empirical procedure, which the authors suggest be conducted as avenues of future study.