Services Marketing: Concepts, Cases and Strategies
Hoffman, Bateson, Wood & Kenyon
ISBN: 9781844808137
SHORT-ANSWER ESSAYS
Chapter 15: Defining and Measuring Service Quality
1. Explain how providing poor service can actually increase a country's Gross
Domestic Product (GDP).
ANS:
 A typical example would be the situation where a mail order company sends a customer
the wrong product. The dollars spent on correcting the mistake in the form of phone calls
and return mailings would add to the gross domestic product.
2. Explain why the productivity of education and government services is notoriously
difficult to measure.
ANS:
 Increases in quality, such as improving the quality of education and training
governmental employees to be more pleasant throughout their daily interactions with the
public, do not show up in traditional productivity measures such as the number of
graduates produced or the number of customers served.
3. Provide a brief description for each of the seven gaps within the Conceptual Model of Service
quality.
ANS:
 service gap: the distance between a customer's expectation of a service and perception of
the service actually developed; knowledge gap: the difference between what customers
expect of a service and what management perceives the customers to expect; standards
gap: the difference betweeercn what management perceives customers to expect and the
quality specifications set for service delivery; delivery gap: the difference between the
quality standards set for service delivery and the actual quality of service delivery;
communications gap: the difference between the actual quality of service delivered and
the quality of service described in the firm's external communications, perceptions gap:
actual and what was perceived, interpretation gap: promise in communication and that
received.
4. List the seven dimensions of service quality. Which dimension is typically rated by customers
as the most important? Which is typically rated as the least important?
ANS:
 The seven dimensions of service quality include reliability, responsiveness, assurance,
empathy, and tangibles. Their ordering reflects their typical importance from most
Services Marketing: Concepts, Cases and Strategies
Hoffman, Bateson, Wood & Kenyon
ISBN: 9781844808137
important to least important.
5. In general, service quality information systems focus on two types of research: customer
research and noncustomer research. List the components of the service quality information
system under the appropriate research heading.
ANS:
 Customer research: solicitation of customer complaints, after-sale surveys, focus group
interviews, and total market service quality surveys; Noncustomer research: employee
surveys and mystery shopping.