Relative Importance of Servqual Dimensions in Indian Service Sectors

The Indian Service Sector is facing inter-changes in the economy especially after globalization. The entry of private and foreign companies puts a high pressure on government owned companies and challenges the provision of services at the international standards. These changes result in higher focus on non-price strategy especially service quality of the companies. Each company wants to become more customer centric for their survival and growth. Even though there are so many studies related to service quality and its consequences, only a few studies are related with the relative importance of service quality dimensions in various service sectors as per their customers' view. Hence the present study focuses to fill up this research gap.

The study includes five service quality dimensions proposed by Parasuraman et.al., (1986). The included service sectors are Banks, Insurance, Hotels, Restaurants, Health Care Centres, Transports and Educational institutions. The customers of the above said seven sectors have been included for the present study. The relative importance of each service quality dimension is measured in all seven sectors with the help of paired comparison and 't' test. The results suggest that the relative importance on service quality dimensions in the service sectors is statistically different. Hence, it is highly essential to use the weighted SERVQUAL/SERVPERF scale to evaluate the service quality analysis in any service sector.