Critical Analysis of the Article from both POSITIVE and NEGATIVE aspects - Essay Example

The Article “ A comprehensive framework for quality An investigation of critical conceptual and measurement issues through a longitudinal study” has been written by Dabholkar, P, Shepherd, D and Thorpe, D. This article was published in Journal of Retailing (2000) in volume no. 76 and Issue.2.The basic premise of this article is to understand the service quality and how its consequences can be for the businesses. The most significant part of this study is the fact that it has adapted a very unique approach of performing a longitudinal study by taking a cross sectional data thus making it a very comprehensive study to understand service quality from different perspectives and according to different behaviors.

This paper has undertaken a very comprehensive approach while dealing the issue of service marketing and how service quality contribute towards achieving organizational objectives. The overall issue is to address some of the conceptual issues and frameworks which earlier research has failed to undertake thus were left behind. Authors have focused on overcoming the shortcomings of the earlier research undertaken and the tried to fill the gaps left by the earlier researchers in understanding service quality and its association with different components.

The antecedents Model of service quality is developed in a response to the overall focus of the earlier research to consider different variables like reliability and comfort as the components of the service quality but the authors have described them as the antecedents of the service quality thus differing from most of the earlier studies.The reason for undertaking a longitudinal study has been to develop a sort of model which succeeds in measuring the expectations before the service whereas to measure so called disconfirmation after the service.

This therefore offers a relatively greater flexibility and breadth to undertake the study in relatively larger context wit focus on the development of an approach which provides answers to some of the critical questions related with the subject.The longitudinal as well as cross sectional nature of the study therefore offered writers a chance to study various frameworks and to develop a framework which can encompass different consequencs, mediators as well as the antecedents of the service quality.

What is however, lacking in this article is the approach undertaken and very nature of the study. Over the period of time, services and their basic perception held by the customers have changed thus giving rise to a unique set of predictors which can define the overall success and failure of the framework. This also means that the framework proposed by the writers is not comprehensive enough to incorporate the changes that may take place in the future. The overall antecedents defined by the authors and their impact on the service quality therefore cannot be relied as the only antecedents that define the service quality.

The model or framework should have the ability to incorporate the future changes in the way service quality is perceived. Further, the longitudinal as well as cross sectional studies have their own limitations too.