Service Quality: The Future of the Services Industry

“Why is quality such an important issue in the marketing of services? Why is quality more difficult to manage in service industries than it is in the case of physical goods? Use examples to support your answer.”

The concept of service quality is a relatively new construct in the marketing discipline which first emerged in the 1980’s when organisations began to consider quality not only in the already established manufacturing sector but in the rapidly evolving service industries sector also. Specifically defined service quality is a subjective experience which results from ‘an evaluation process in which the customer compares their perceptions of service with their expectations’ (McColl-Kennedy 2003). In the late 1990s and early part of the 21st century service organisations began to realise the importance of service quality and strived to narrow the gap between the customers perceptions of service and their expectations in order to deliver a quality service that linked to customer satisfaction, retention and patronage. This relisation that service quality was an important source of competitive advantage and long-term profitability for service organisation’s advocated the paradigm shift in marketing from a focus on manufacturing quality to incorporate service quality also. Moreover the modern day services firm strives to deliver a quality service on a routine basis, however due to the uncontrollable and unpredictable nature of services they have proved much more difficult to manage than physical goods in the manufacturing sector.

Services are intangible, subjective processes in which production and consumption occur simultaneously which is why service customers look at the quality of both the service process and the outcomes of service delivery compared to goods where they only assess the