Job Satisfaction
Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Chapter – 2
Literature Review
R
esearch has indicated that service quality has been increasingly recognized as a critical factor in the success of any business
(Parasuraman et al., 1988) and the banking sector in this case is not exceptional. Service quality has been widely used to evaluate the performance of banking services (Cowling and Newman, 1995). The banks understand that customers will be loyal if they receive greater value than from competitors (Dawes and Swailes, 1999) and on the other hand, banks can earn high profits if they are able to position themselves better than their competitors within a specific market (Davies et al., 1995). Therefore, banks need focus on service quality as a core competitive strategy (Chaoprasert and Elsey, 2004). Moreover, banks all over the world offer similar kinds of services, and try to quickly match their competitors’ innovations. It can be noted that customers can perceive differences in the quality of service (Chaoprasert and Elsey, 2004). Moreover, customers evaluate banks’ performance mainly on the basis of their personal contact and interaction (Gronroos, 1990). Defining service quality and its components in a form that is actionable in the workplace is an important endeavor that any business company cannot take lightly. Moreover, many scholars agree that service quality can be decomposed into two major dimensions (Gronroos, 1984; Lehtinen and Lehtinen, 1982). The first is referred to by Zeithaml et al. (1985) as “outcome quality” and the second by Gronroos (1984) as “technical quality”. However, the first dimension is concerned with what the service delivers and on the other hand; the second dimension is concerned with how the service is delivered: the
27
Chapter – 2
Literature Review
process that the customer went through to get to the outcome of the service. The topic of measuring service quality has been studied extensively in the past15 years. The study of
Chapter – 2
Literature Review
R
esearch has indicated that service quality has been increasingly recognized as a critical factor in the success of any business
(Parasuraman et al., 1988) and the banking sector in this case is not exceptional. Service quality has been widely used to evaluate the performance of banking services (Cowling and Newman, 1995). The banks understand that customers will be loyal if they receive greater value than from competitors (Dawes and Swailes, 1999) and on the other hand, banks can earn high profits if they are able to position themselves better than their competitors within a specific market (Davies et al., 1995). Therefore, banks need focus on service quality as a core competitive strategy (Chaoprasert and Elsey, 2004). Moreover, banks all over the world offer similar kinds of services, and try to quickly match their competitors’ innovations. It can be noted that customers can perceive differences in the quality of service (Chaoprasert and Elsey, 2004). Moreover, customers evaluate banks’ performance mainly on the basis of their personal contact and interaction (Gronroos, 1990). Defining service quality and its components in a form that is actionable in the workplace is an important endeavor that any business company cannot take lightly. Moreover, many scholars agree that service quality can be decomposed into two major dimensions (Gronroos, 1984; Lehtinen and Lehtinen, 1982). The first is referred to by Zeithaml et al. (1985) as “outcome quality” and the second by Gronroos (1984) as “technical quality”. However, the first dimension is concerned with what the service delivers and on the other hand; the second dimension is concerned with how the service is delivered: the
27
Chapter – 2
Literature Review
process that the customer went through to get to the outcome of the service. The topic of measuring service quality has been studied extensively in the past15 years. The study of