An analysis of the five gap model
Introduction
Quality of service has been studied in the area of business management for years because the market is more competitive and marketing management has transferred its focus from internal performance such as production to external interests such as satisfaction and customers' perception of service quality.
Based on this traditional definition of service quality, Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985) developed the "Gap Model" of perceived service quality.
This model has five gaps:
Gap 1. Consumer expectation - Management perception gap
Gap 2. Management perception - Service quality specification gap
Gap 3. Service quality specifications - Service delivery gap
Gap 4. Service delivery - External communication gap
Gap 5. Expected service - Experienced service
Gap One--Positioning
Between customer's expectation and management's perceptions of those expectation i.e. not knowing what customers expect
This gap occurs when management were either totally unaware of certain critical consumer expectations or were misreading the importance of those expectations to consumers. Therefore, management does not understand how the service should be designed, what support or secondary services the customer requires or what the right quality for the customer is. Besides consumers, employees can be defined as internal consumers as well.
The big problems that for the management is:
We know what they really want (without asking them)
This is related to both consumers and employees, no matter how an intelligent manager you are, you will never know what are your customer and employee want at different levels and different times. So the communication between both external and internal consumers must be kept very well. Lack of marketing research is the most common problem for doing a business. The insufficient upward communication between contact personnel to management is another cause. Maybe there are too many levels between them, reducing the levels between the two
Quality of service has been studied in the area of business management for years because the market is more competitive and marketing management has transferred its focus from internal performance such as production to external interests such as satisfaction and customers' perception of service quality.
Based on this traditional definition of service quality, Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985) developed the "Gap Model" of perceived service quality.
This model has five gaps:
Gap 1. Consumer expectation - Management perception gap
Gap 2. Management perception - Service quality specification gap
Gap 3. Service quality specifications - Service delivery gap
Gap 4. Service delivery - External communication gap
Gap 5. Expected service - Experienced service
Gap One--Positioning
Between customer's expectation and management's perceptions of those expectation i.e. not knowing what customers expect
This gap occurs when management were either totally unaware of certain critical consumer expectations or were misreading the importance of those expectations to consumers. Therefore, management does not understand how the service should be designed, what support or secondary services the customer requires or what the right quality for the customer is. Besides consumers, employees can be defined as internal consumers as well.
The big problems that for the management is:
We know what they really want (without asking them)
This is related to both consumers and employees, no matter how an intelligent manager you are, you will never know what are your customer and employee want at different levels and different times. So the communication between both external and internal consumers must be kept very well. Lack of marketing research is the most common problem for doing a business. The insufficient upward communication between contact personnel to management is another cause. Maybe there are too many levels between them, reducing the levels between the two
References: R. Stein, The Next Phase of Total Quality Management. Macel Dekker, Inc.,1994. T. Cartin, Principles and Practices of TQM. ASQC Quality Press.,1993. A Service Quality Audit: Application of the Gap Analysis Model CIRAS Review Paper Paul R. Messinger, University of Alberta