Badanie jakości usług metodą Servqual - więcej zalet czy wad?

SERVQUAL has emerged as the most popular and most widely used method for measuring service quality. This scale was developed by Parasuraman et al. in 1985, and refined in 1988, 1991 and 1994. It is a survey instrument which claims to measure the service quality in any type of service organization on five generic dimensions (tangibles, reliability, assurance, responsiveness, empathy). The review of the literature reveals that the SERVQUAL instrument draws attention from both academics and practitioners. Since its creation, this method has been the object of various criticisms raised by a number of authors. Therefore, this paper presents some problems identifies and discussed in the literature. SERVQUAL has been extensively criticised on both theoretical and operational grounds (Buttle; 1996). Other authors claim that the difficulties associated with the SERVQUAL measure that are identified in the literaure can be grouped in four main categories: (1) the use of difference or gap scores, (2) poor predective and convergent validity, (3) the ambiguous definition of the "expectations" construct and (4) unstable dimensionality (Van Dyke et al.; 1999). Besides the discussed weaknesses, SERVQUAL has some particular advantages, which were also presented in this paper (e.g. information on service quality gaps can help managers diagnose where performance improvement can best be targeted). To sum up the foregoing, it has to be pointed that despite the criticisms levelled at the method, SERVQUAL is still regarded as a very useful tool and a leading measure of service quality. But in each situation this method needs to be adapted for the type of research conducted, the specific service environments and the cultural context.