Individualism and collectivism

Purpose – This paper reviews 20 years (1988‐2008) of research on the SERVQUAL scale for measuring service quality.Design/methodology/approach – A range of studies that have applied the SERVQUAL scale in this 20‐year period are examined in a non‐exhaustive review of the literature. These studies are selected from well‐known databases – such as “ABI/Inform”, “ScienceDirect”, and “EBSCOhost”.Findings – The paper identifies and summarizes numerous theoretical and empirical criticisms of the SERVQUAL scale. Despite these criticisms, the paper concludes that SERVQUAL remains a useful instrument for service‐quality research.Originality/value – The paper provides a useful source of information on SERVQUAL and its applications. In particular, the paper summarizes a selection of 30 applications of SERVQUAL.

A review of twenty years of SERVQUAL research

This research aims to examine the relationships among three components of the physical environment (i.e., decor and artifacts, spatial layout, and ambient conditions), price perception, customer sa...

The Roles of the Physical Environment, Price Perception, and Customer Satisfaction in Determining Customer Loyalty in the Restaurant Industry:

This article advances our understanding of the influence of affect in consumers’ responses to brief, nonpersonal service encounters. This study contributes to the services marketing literature by examining for mundane service transactions the impact of customer-displayed emotion and affect on assessments of the service encounter and the overall experience. Observational and perceptual data from customers were matched with frontline employees in 200 transaction-specific encounters. The results of this study suggest that consumers’ evaluations of the service encounter correlate highly with their displayed emotions during the interaction and postencounter mood states. Finally, the findings indicate that frontline employees’perceptions of the encounter are not aligned with those of their customers. The managerial implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

The Role of Emotions in Service Encounters

In the past decade, Pine and Gilmore set out the vision for a new economic era, the experience economy, in which consumers are in search for extraordinary and memorable experiences. Since then, a rich body of research on applications of the experience economy concepts have appeared in the marketing literature. However, academic investigations on the measurement of tourism experiences are very recent. The purpose of this article is twofold: to identify the underlying dimensions of cruisers’ experiences and to investigate the relationships among cruisers’ experiences, satisfaction, and intention to recommend. Overall, findings of this study enhance the theoretical progress on the experiential concept in tourism and offer important implications for cruise marketers.

Dimensions of Cruisers' Experiences, Satisfaction, and Intention to Recommend

eWOM effects on hotel booking intentions, attitudes, trust, and website perceptions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a conceptual model of the relationships among the constructs of “service quality”, “emotional satisfaction”, and “behavioural intention” in the hospitality industry.Design/methodology/approach – The study utilises a review of the literature to propose a conceptual model that postulates that: service quality is positively related to consumers' emotions; service quality is positively related to behavioural intentions; and consumers' emotions are positively related to behavioural intentions. Moreover, the model postulates that emotional satisfaction partially mediates the effect of service quality on behavioural intentions. The model is tested in an empirical study with data from a survey among 200 Canadian travellers.Findings – All the hypothesised relationships are supported. The results confirm that service quality exerts both direct and indirect effects (through emotional satisfaction) on behavioural intentions.Research limitations/implications –...

Service quality, emotional satisfaction, and behavioural intentions: A study in the hotel industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss the key conceptual and empirical issues that should be considered in the development of alternative industry‐specific measurement scales of service quality (other than SERVQUAL).Design/methodology/approach – A total of 30 studies are selected from two well‐known databases: Science direct and ABI inform. These studies are subjected to a comprehensive in‐depth content analysis and theoretical discussion of the key conceptual and empirical issues to be considered in the development of service‐quality measurement instruments.Findings – The study identifies deficiencies in some of the alternative service‐quality measures; however, the identified deficiencies do not invalidate the essential usefulness of the scales. The study makes constructive suggestions for the development of future scales.Originality/value – This is the first work to describe and contrast a large number of service‐quality measurement models, other than the well‐known SERVQUAL in...

Alternative measures of service quality: a review

This paper examines the impact of consumption emotions on consumers' satisfaction and how it affects what they tell other consumers. The conceptual model is based on the premise that pleasure and arousal influence satisfaction, word-of-mouth (WOM) communications, and the likelihood of generating WOM. A study of 470 moviegoers in a French Canadian city supports most of these relationships. The results indicate that even when the effects of satisfaction are accounted for, pleasure and arousal have significant effects on WOM. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Riadh Ladhari

Papers

A review of twenty years of SERVQUAL research

eWOM effects on hotel booking intentions, attitudes, trust, and website perceptions

Service quality, emotional satisfaction, and behavioural intentions: A study in the hotel industry

Alternative measures of service quality: a review

The effect of consumption emotions on satisfaction and word‐of‐mouth communications