Customer Satisfaction at University: A Survey Analysis and an Evaluation of Research Methods - Assignment Example

Marketing Research Satisfaction at A Survey Analysis and an Evaluation of Research Methods Introduction and Context satisfaction survey is important in any organization as it offers an opportunity for the organization to strategize and offer best services or improve the current consumer services. Customer satisfaction is based on the gap between the perceptions and expectations of the customer in regard to the quality of the service being offered. One of the models used to measure customer satisfaction is SERVQUAL; the measurement of customer satisfaction is based on its five dimensions. The objectives of this study are: To assess the customer satisfaction within UOD and add more insight into the deeper customer experience. To analyze the different research approaches used for assessing customer satisfaction both qualitatively and quantitatively. The paper is divided into two parts (a) in part one, an in-depth explanation of SERVQUAL will be provided and the results or findings will be analyzed and presented, (b) in part two, issues related to qualitative research will be discussed. Part One SERVQUAL The SERVQUAL model was developed by Berry, Parasuraman and Zeithaml in the 1980s and the model was based on 12 focus groups in which they created a questionnaire that comprised of 22 criteria that are frequently used by the focus group respondents to assess the quality of service. After further research, Parasuraman et al. clustered the 22 criteria into 5 service quality elements and they claimed that the dimensions will assist in the determination of the consumer’s opinion of any service business. The dimensions included reliability, responsiveness, tangibles, assurance, and empathy (Alexander and Hill 2006, p241). SERVQUAL (Service Quality Model) is a service quality instrument and it is based on the suggestion that service quality is measurable. It is calculated as the gap between the customer’s expectation of service and the performance they deem to have received. The respondents rate the kind of service they expect to receive from an outstanding organization and afterwards they rate the performance they ought to have received from that particular organization. The quality of service is calculated as the two scores differences and better quality service results in a small gap. SERVQUAL measures several service quality dimensions (Landrum et al. 2009, p18). The service has made revolutions in the services marketing discipline. The service gap idea discusses the reign of services gap on the side of the provider of the service in that it can hamper the delivery of services that consumer believes to be of the highest quality. The model proposes five gaps that are the major obstacles in an attempt to offer proper service. The SERVQUAL model is based on five dimensions that attempt to describe the consumer’s experience. The dimensions include (a) reliability is described as the providence of what is promised in an accurate and dependent way, (b) assurance is described as the courtesy and knowledge of the employees and it is the ability of the employees to show confidence and trust, (c) tangibles are defined as the equipment, appearance, and physical facilities of the personnel, (d) empathy is defined as the level of individual attention and caring that is provided to the consumer, and (e) responsiveness is described as the willingness of the employee to offer prompt service and assist the customer (Herbig 1998, p262). Advantages and Disadvantages of SERVQUAL Advantages The relative significance of the customer expectations in respect to the different service quality dimensions can be determined. The service quality can be traced over time by running the normal SERVQUAL investigations. Using the basis of the individual SERVQUAL scores, the organization’s consumers can be divided by the perceived quality. SERVQUAL can be utilized to check the performance of the organization in line with the main competitors. Competitive achievement is measured by the benchmarking the scores of SERVQUAL against those of the competitors rather than on an arbitrary target. SERVQUAL has predictive qualities and they are based on the fact that there is a relationship between a number of necessary consumer intentions and the service quality; the evidence for argument is weak (Luck, Pocock and Tricker 2004, p259). Disadvantages Problems arising from the utilization of the different scores to measure a construct. The incapability of the 7-point Likert scale to differentiate slight differences in the perceptions and expectations of the consumer. The service quality construct that is given by SERVQUAL may not be appropriate approach in the definition of the ideology of service quality. Greater efficiency in getting the scores is believed to be provided by performance based measures rather than the SERVQUAL measure or calculations (Luck, Pocock and Tricker 2004, p259). Criticism has risen over the use of SERVQUAL in the measurement of expectations. Some researchers are of the opinion that measurement of expectations is not necessary and that measurement of the perceptions of the outcomes or the services outcomes is enough. A number of issues have risen in the service context and they include; the gaps model, process orientation, dimensionality, expectations, item composition, moments of truth, the two administrations of the SERVQUAL scale, scale points, and polarity (Gilmore 2003, p42). Sample Issues and its Significance SERVQUAL has limitations in relation to the data collected due to the sample size and type. A good example is the limitations experienced when assessing the class service quality in the colleges and universities. The data obtained for the study were all taken from the Information Systems classes students. While most of the students were not from the Information Systems major, the sample was restricted to one discipline of the class. The results were not generalized as the samples were only drawn from one discipline; strengthening of the results could be achieved by collecting samples from a number of disciplines. The research further recommended the increase of the sample size for the purposes of comparison (Brooks and Miller 2010, p6). The Key Findings The key findings of the research in relation to the SERVQUAL method should be able to indicate at least all of the dimensions of consumer service quality. The dimensions are reliability, responsiveness, tangibles, assurance, and empathy. The findings should also be capable of providing the relationship between the consumer perception and expectation in relation to the quality of the service being provided by the organization. The best service quality is achieved when the score gap is narrow or small, that is, the difference between consumer perception and expectations (Landrum et al. 2009, p18). Further Research The five dimensions of SERVQUAL are interrelated and one area that can be explored in the nature and causes of the interrelationships. The research on these interrelationships can give limelight into the understanding of the service quality. Research focusing on the split nature of the tangibles can be very useful in answering the questions concerning the issues arising from this dimension. Tangibles can be split into communication and personnel materials, and facilities and equipment. The split is thought to be instigated by the structural differences of perceptions rather than by expectations (Berry, Parasuraman and Zeithaml 1991, p442). Another important “area for future research is the measurement of expectations and the related issue of computing perception-minus-expectation gap scores” (Berry, Parasuraman and Zeithaml 1991, p443). This is due to the fact there are practical and theoretical aspects in regard to the advantages and disadvantages of calculating the perceptions and expectations separately and the computation of the gap scores (Berry, Parasuraman and Zeithaml 1991, p443). Part II How might qualitative methods be used to add to our understanding of the customer experience? Generally, qualitative techniques apply simple explanation oriented approaches in unraveling the customer experience, which goes a long way in understanding the actual situation. When compared to other techniques such as quantitative analyses, qualitative results are relatively easy to be interpreted to comprehension by almost every user. As such, any study of customer experience would be more complete if accompanied by the qualitative segment. In order to add to our understanding of the entire customer experience assessment, it could be difficult to represent the results in qualitative measures without certain aspects of narrative explanation. Quantification of results is usually scaled down to interpretations that are related to certain logical inferences that assist in understanding the actual position. It is generally therefore advisable to break the monotony of figures as depicted in quantitative representation of results of a study by introducing qualitative elements that assist in drawing conclusions from the scenarios. What does qualitative involve? Qualitative approach when employed in a research undertaking such as understanding customer experience deals with more intricate issues than just obtaining data in form of figures. In other words, qualitative assessment unravels the driving force to a certain observed behavior that leads to a particular set of observations. Qualitative study therefore entails obtaining explanations to certain marked human behavior such as why customers react in a certain way. On the contrary, quantitative studies deal with more statistical orientations involving figures without much inference drawing from the observed patterns. What methods are used in Qualitative Techniques Almost all of the available methods applied in customer research that employs qualitative techniques are targeted at obtaining customers response on the type of service they perceive to receive at an organization. To achieve this task, facilitating and carrying out direct customer communication is a very important tool. The importance of carrying out the communication platform is aimed at collecting the actual information from the customers regarding what causes a certain customer behavior. Customers’ responses are then used in making the best possible corrections in the delivery of services so as to upgrade loyalty and sustain competitive advantage. One of the methods employed in collecting data for use in drawing inferences under the qualitative technique is direct interview. According to Cook (2004, p40), an in-depth and interactive customer communication in form of an interview delivers the relevant information about what an organization needs to improve on or maintain. The author holds the opinion that individual perceptions about the performance and delivery of services can be used extrapolated to create and interpret trend in customer behavior (National Research Council (US) 2010, p22). Using such data can assist the management to introduce the appropriate interventions on the conditions. Such information revealed in the methods is how the customers feel about first reception at the organization, how the processing of their service went on, the conduct of the serving officers, how pleasant the follow-up was, how the customer felt about a competitor offering similar services and individual’s opinion of improvements. Other methods of collection of qualitative data include customer to customer focus groups, questionnaires, surveys, structured interviews, suggestion programs, mystery shopping, complaints programs and customer observation platforms (Cook 2004, p43). Many of these are employed in a more qualitative research oriented approaches that require documentation and interpretation over a certain period of time. Advantages and Disadvantages There are several benefits of carrying out qualitative technique approaches of understanding customer experience in an organization. Firstly, qualitative techniques are easy to employ and do not require technical interpretations as statistical and quantitative studies require. Secondly, decision making process is not affected due to their easy interpretation without expert involvement. Thirdly, little training is needed in several qualitative research techniques. Fourthly, the methods are not expensive to implement, interpret and incorporate into the organizational system. Fourthly, the interactive part of data collection in many of qualitative techniques is beneficial in creation of appropriate customer response. Fifthly, time is saved on drawing the relevant conclusions form the data obtained from a qualitative assessment. On the other hand, there are a certain limitations that are inherent to this technique one of which is the determination of the effective variables to be studied as causative values in customer experience results. Likewise, there is a closely related limitation that occurs after determining the variables, in that rating of the magnitude of the factors influencing customer experience becomes tricky. It is usually difficult for instance to unravel the strength of factors such as reception, processing and the attendant attitudes across all the customers since the views may be interpreted as subjective. It is therefore expected that some level of vulnerability to generalization occurs in the studies. Another limitation is occasioned by the fact that it is difficult to have an assessment that is purely qualitative without some quantitative elements (Kazmi 2008, p131). As such, it is difficult to conduct a just a simple study without a theoretical backing for instance by using other techniques such as quantitative techniques. Failure to dissect certain qualitative results to incorporate quantitative aspects may lead to misrepresentation of data. What are the differences between qualitative approaches and quantitative approaches? There are certain differences that are observed between qualitative and quantitative techniques as outlined in Mayoux (n.d, p4). Qualitative technique creates several inter-linkages thereby giving a more holistic picture of the analysis than quantitative technique which is isolative for creation of measure. In addition, several realities are represented, the results are interpretative, face-to-face data collection from the field is needed, focus is placed on other people’s information and actual happenings are recorded in qualitative assessment. On the other hand, a reality is singled out, results need simplification and expert interpretation, field work may not be necessary in data collection, other people’s information is relied on a restricted basis and mainly historic data is applied in quantitative techniques. Conclusion Customer experience can be determined using SERVQUAL technique that applies focus groups in analyzing customer behavior. Application of sampling techniques in SERVQUAL demonstrates the quantitative approach employed in the analysis. Accompanying such analysis with relevant explanation gives a complete picture of the customer experience. Based on these differences, Mayoux (n.d, p5) isolates qualitative techniques to be important in enhancing the understanding what is happening, who is involved in the problem and why such events are happening. By isolating such ideas, the author portrays qualitative techniques as very important in understanding customer experience. References Alexander, J. & Hill, N. (2006) The handbook of customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement. Hampshire, UK: Gower Publishing, Ltd. Berry, L. L., Parasuraman, A. & Zeithaml, V. A. (1991) Refinement and reassessment of the SERVQUAL scale. Journal of Retailing 67(4), pp420-450. Brooks, N. G. & Miller, R. 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(2004) Measuring customer service effectiveness. Hants, England: Gower Publishing, Ltd., National Research Council (US) (2010) Developing an airport performance-measurement system. Washington, DC: Transport Research Board Read More