PORT SERVICE QUALITY CONCEPT THEORETICAL DETERMINANTS
Port service quality may be defined as a product or service that satisfies customer requirements and expectations. According to the Advances project, to secure a quality port service means to secure a service in a reliable, safe, competitive and environment-friendly manner in accordance with customer requirements and the lowest possible level of risks for life, environment, and property.
The enhancement of competitiveness, safety, and higher level of port environment protection calls for introduction of a port service quality concept, based on clearly defined term denoting quality, precisely determined requirements the port is required to meet on the market, port basic functions (operational areas), identification of stakeholders and their requirements, and bottle-necks and problems most frequently encountered in port operations.
The complexity of the port service quality concept ensues from principal features of services themselves (intangibility, heterogeneity, and inseparability of production from consumption), from the complexity of the port service process of production, as well as from the large number of stakeholders taking part in service production and subjective approach to the understanding of quality.
Service quality may be defined from two aspects: the organization-based aspect and the customer-based aspect. Whereas from the organization-based aspect service quality is the basic requirement characterized by the price, from the customer-based aspect quality is a set of attributes (dimensions are the most important service quality parameters measurable by a set of attributes) for the evaluation of service meeting customer requirements. From the organization-based aspect, the provided service must be in compliance with customer requirements, provided however that the cost of quality be taken into