A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research

Author(s): A. Parasuraman, Valarie A. Zeithaml and Leonard L. Berry

Source: Journal of Marketing, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 41-50
Published by: American Marketing Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1251430
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A. Parasuraman, Valarie A. Zeithaml, & Leonard L. Berry

A Conceptual Model of Service

Quality and Its Implications
for Future Research

The attainment of quality in products and services has become a pivotal concern of the 1980s. While
quality in tangible goods has been described and measured by marketers, quality in services is largely
undefined and unresearched. The authors attempt to rectify this situation by reporting the insights obtained in an extensive exploratory investigation of quality in four service businesses and by developing
a model of service quality. Propositions and recommendations to stimulate future research about service
quality are offered.

"People want some wise and perceptive statement like,

'Quality is ballet, not hockey.'"-Philip Crosby (1979)

UALITY is an elusive and indistinct construct.

Often mistaken for imprecise adjectives like

"goodness, or luxury, or shininess, or weight" (Crosby
1979), quality and its requirements are not easily ar-

ticulated by consumers (Takeuchi and Quelch 1983).

Explication and measurement of quality also present
problems for researchers (Monroe and Krishnan 1983),
who often bypass definitions and use unidimensional
self-report measures to capture the concept (Jacoby,

Olson, and Haddock 1973; McConnell 1968; Shapiro

1972).

While the substance and determinants of quality

may be undefined, its importance to firms and consumers is unequivocal. Research has demonstrated the
strategic benefits of quality in contributing to market
share and return on investment (e.g., Anderson and

ing productivity (Garvin 1983). The search for quality

is arguably the most important consumer trend of the
1980s (Rabin 1983) as consumers are now demanding
higher quality in products than ever before (Leonard

and Sasser 1982, Takeuchi and Quelch 1983).

Few academic researchers have attempted to de-

fine and model quality because of the difficulties in-

volved in delimiting and measuring the construct.

Moreover, despite the phenomenal growth of the service sector, only a handful of these researchers have
focused on service quality. We attempt to rectify this
situation by (1) reviewing the small number of studies
that have investigated service quality, (2) reporting the
insights obtained in an extensive exploratory investi-

gation of quality in four service businesses, (3) de-

veloping a model of service quality, and (4) offering

propositions to stimulate future research about quality.

Zeithaml 1984; Phillips, Chang, and Buzzell 1983) as

well as in lowering manufacturing costs and improv-

A. Parasuraman and Valarie A. Zeithaml are Associate Professors of

Marketing, and Leonard L. Berry is Foley's/Federated Professor of Retailing and Marketing Studies, Texas A&M University. The research reported in this article was made possible by a grant from the Marketing
Science Institute, Cambridge, MA.

Journal of Marketing
Vol. 49 (Fall 1985), 41-50.

Existing Knowledge about

Service Quality
Efforts in defining and measuring quality have come
largely from the goods sector. According to the pre-

vailing Japanese philosophy, quality is "zero defects-doing it right the first time." Crosby (1979)

A Conceptual Model of Service Quality / 41

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defines quality as "conformance to requirements."

Garvin (1983) measures quality by counting the incidence of "internal" failures (those observed before
a product leaves the factory) and "external" failures
(those incurred in the field after a unit has been installed).
Knowledge about goods quality, however, is insufficient to understand service quality. Three welldocumented characteristics of services-intangibility,
heterogeneity, and inseparability-must be acknowledged for a full understanding of service quality.
First, most services are intangible (Bateson 1977,

Berry 1980, Lovelock 1981, Shostak 1977). Because

they are performances rather than objects, precise

manufacturing specifications concerning uniform quality

can rarely be set. Most services cannot be counted,

measured, inventoried, tested, and verified in advance

of sale to assure quality. Because of intangibility, the
firm may find it difficult to understand how con-

sumers perceive their services and evaluate service

quality (Zeithaml 1981).
Second, services, especially those with a high labor content, are heterogeneous: their performance often

varies from producer to producer, from customer to

customer, and from day to day. Consistency of behavior from service personnel (i.e., uniform quality)
is difficult to assure (Booms and Bitner 1981) because
what the firm intends to deliver may be entirely different from what the consumer receives.
Third, production and consumption of many ser-

vices are inseparable (Carmen and Langeard 1980,

Gronroos 1978, Regan 1963, Upah 1980). As a consequence, quality in services is not engineered at the
manufacturing plant, then delivered intact to the consumer. In labor intensive services, for example, quality occurs during service delivery, usually in an interaction between the client and the contact person from

the service firm (Lehtinen and Lehtinen 1982). The

service firm may also have less managerial control over

quality in services where consumer participation is intense (e.g., haircuts, doctor's visits) because the client
affects the process. In these situations, the consumer's
input (description of how the haircut should look, de-

scription of symptoms) becomes critical to the quality

of service performance.

Service quality has been discussed in only a handful of writings (Gronroos 1982; Lehtinen and Lehti-

nen 1982; Lewis and Booms 1983; Sasser, Olsen, and

Wyckoff 1978). Examination of these writings and other
literature on services suggests three underlying themes:

* Service quality is more difficult for the consumer to evaluate than goods quality.
* Service quality perceptions result from a comparison of consumer expectations with actual
service performance.

* Quality evaluations are not made solely on the

outcome of a service; they also involve evaluations of the process of service delivery.

Service Quality More Difficult to Evaluate

When purchasing goods, the consumer employs many
tangible cues to judge quality: style, hardness, color,
label, feel, package, fit. When purchasing services,
fewer tangible cues exist. In most cases, tangible evidence is limited to the service provider's physical facilities, equipment, and personnel.
In the absence of tangible evidence on which to
evaluate quality, consumers must depend on other cues.
The nature of these other cues has not been investi-

gated by researchers, although some authors have

suggested that price becomes a pivotal quality indicator in situations where other information is not

available (McConnell 1968, Olander 1970, Zeithaml

1981). Because of service intangibility, a firm may

find it more difficult to understand how consumers

perceive services and service quality. "When a service provider knows how [the service] will be evaluated by the consumer, we will be able to suggest

how to influence these evaluations in a desired direction" (Gronroos 1982).

Quality Is a Comparison between

Expectations and Performance

Researchers and managers of service firms concur that

service quality involves a comparison of expectations

with performance:

Service quality is a measure of how well the service

level delivered matches customer expectations. Delivering quality service means conforming to customer expectations on a consistent basis. (Lewis and
Booms 1983)

In line with this thinking, Gronroos (1982) developed

a model in which he contends that consumers compare
the service they expect with perceptions of the service
they receive in evaluating service quality.
Smith and Houston (1982) claimed that satisfaction with services is related to confirmation or dis-

confirmation of expectations. They based their research on the disconfirmation paradigm, which
maintains that satisfaction is related to the size and
direction of the disconfirmation experience where disconfirmation is related to the person's initial expectations (Churchill and Suprenaut 1982).

Quality Evaluations Involve Outcomes and

Processes

Sasser, Olsen, and Wyckoff (1978) discussed three

different dimensions of service performance: levels of
material, facilities, and personnel. Implied in this trichotomy is the notion that service quality involves more

than outcome; it also includes the manner in which

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the service is delivered. This notion surfaces in other

research on service quality as well.

Gronroos, for example, postulated that two types
of service quality exist: technical quality, which involves what the customer is actually receiving from
the service, and functional quality, which involves the
manner in which the service is delivered (Gronroos
1982).

Lehtinen and Lehtinen's (1982) basic premise is

that service quality is produced in the interaction between a customer and elements in the service organization. They use three quality dimensions: physical
quality, which includes the physical aspects of the service (e.g., equipment or building); corporate quality,
which involves the company's image or profile; and
interactive quality, which derives from the interaction
between contact personnel and customers as well as
between some customers and other customers. They
further differentiate between the quality associated with

the process of service delivery and the quality associated with the outcome of the service.

Exploratory Investigation
Because the literature on service quality is not yet rich
enough to provide a sound conceptual foundation for
investigating service quality, an exploratory qualitative study was undertaken to investigate the concept

of service quality. Specifically, focus group interviews with consumers and in-depth interviews with

executives were conducted to develop a conceptual

model of service quality. The approach used is con-

product repair and maintenance. While this set of service businesses is not exhaustive, it represents a crosssection of industries which vary along key dimensions

used to categorize services (Lovelock 1980, 1983).

For example, retail banking and securities brokerage
services are more "high contact services" than the other

two types. The nature and results of the service act

are more tangible for product repair and maintenance
services than for the other three types. In terms of
service delivery, discrete transactions characterize credit

card services and product repair and maintenance services to a greater extent than the other two types of

services.

Executive Interviews

A nationally recognized company from each of the

four service businesses participated in the study. Indepth personal interviews comprised of open-ended
questions were conducted with three or four executives in each firm. The executives were selected from
marketing, operations, senior management, and customer relations because each of these areas could have
an impact on quality in service firms. The respondents
held titles such as president, senior vice president, di-

rector of customer relations, and manager of consumer market research. Fourteen executives were in-

terviewed about a broad range of service quality issues

(e.g., what they perceived to be service quality from
the consumer's perspective, what steps they took to
control or improve service quality, and what problems
they faced in delivering high quality services).

sistent with procedures recommended for marketing

Focus Group Interviews

theory development by several scholars (Deshpande

A total of 12 focus group interviews was conducted,

three for each of the four selected services. Eight of
the focus groups were held in a metropolitan area in
the southwest. The remaining four were conducted in
the vicinity of the participating companies' headquarters and were therefore spread across the country: one
on the West Coast, one in the Midwest, and two in

1983; Peter and Olson 1983; Zaltman, LeMasters, and

Heffring 1982).
In-depth interviews of executives in four nationally recognized service firms and a set of focus group
interviews of consumers were conducted to gain insights about the following questions:

* What do managers of service firms perceive to

be the key attributes of service quality? What

problems and tasks are involved in providing

high quality service?

* What do consumers perceive to be the key attributes of quality in services?

* Do discrepancies exist between the perceptions

of consumers and service marketers?

* Can consumer and marketer perceptions be

combined in a general model that explains service quality from the consumer's standpoint?

Service Categories Investigated

Four service categories were chosen for investigation:
retail banking, credit card, securities brokerage, and

the East.

The focus groups were formed in accordance with

guidelines traditionally followed in the marketing re-

search field (Bellenger, Berhardt, and Goldstucker

1976). Respondents were screened to ensure that they

were current or recent users of the service in question.

To maintain homogeneity and assure maximum participation, respondents were assigned to groups based

on age and sex. Six of the twelve groups included

only males and six included only females. At least
one male group and one female group were interviewed for each of the four services. Consistency in
age was maintained within groups; however, age diversity across groups for each service category was
established to ascertain the viewpoints of a broad cross
section of consumers.

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Identities of participating firms were not revealed

to focus group participants. Discussion about quality
of a given service centered on consumer experiences
and perceptions relating to that service in general, as

FIGURE 1

Service Quality Model

CONSUMER

opposed to the specific service of the participating firm

in that service category. Questions asked by the moderator covered topics such as instances of and reasons
for satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the service;

descriptions of an ideal service (e.g., ideal bank or

ideal credit card); the meaning of service quality; factors important in evaluating service quality; perfor-

mance expectations concerning the service; and the

role of price in service quality.

Insights from Exploratory

Investigation
Executive Interviews
Remarkably consistent patterns emerged from the four

sets of executive interviews. While some perceptions

about service quality were specific to the industries

selected, commonalities among the industries prevailed. The commonalities are encouraging for they
suggest that a general model of service quality can be
developed.
Perhaps the most important insight obtained from
analyzing the executive responses is the following:
A set of key discrepancies or gaps exists regarding executive perceptions of service quality and the tasks associated with service delivery to consumers. These gaps can be major
hurdles in attempting to deliver a service which

consumers would perceive as being of high

quality.

The gaps revealed by the executive interviews are

shown in the lower portion (i.e., the MARKETER side)
of Figure 1. This figure summarizes the key insights
gained (through the focus group as well as executive
interviews) about the concept of service quality and
factors affecting it. The remainder of this section discusses the gaps on the service marketer's side (GAPI,
GAP2, GAP3, and GAP4) and presents propositions implied by those gaps. The consumer's side of the service quality model in Figure I is discussed in the next

section.

Consumer expectation-management perception gap

(GAPI): Many of the executive perceptions about what
consumers expect in a quality service were congruent
with the consumer expectations revealed in the focus

groups. However, discrepancies between executive

perceptions and consumer expectations existed, as illustrated by the following examples:

* Privacy or confidentiality during transactions

emerged as a pivotal quality attribute in every
banking and securities brokerage focus group.
Rarely was this consideration mentioned in the
executive interviews.

* The physical and security features of credit cards

(e.g., the likelihood that unauthorized people

could use the cards) generated substantial discussion in the focus group interviews but did
not emerge as critical in the executive inter-

views.

* The product repair and maintenance focus groups

indicated that a large repair service firm was

unlikely to be viewed as a high quality firm.

Small independent repair firms were consistently associated with high quality. In contrast,
most executive comments indicated that a firm's

size would signal strength in a quality context.

In essence, service firm executives may not always

understand what features connote high quality to consumers in advance, what features a service must have
in order to meet consumer needs, and what levels of
performance on those features are needed to deliver

high quality service. This insight is consistent with

previous research in services, which suggests that service marketers may not always understand what consumers expect in a service (Langeard et al. 1981, Pa-

rasuraman and Zeithaml 1982). This lack of under-

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standing may affect quality perceptions of consumers:

Proposition 1: The gap between consumer

expectations and management
perceptions of those expecta-

tions will have an impact on

the consumer's evaluation of

service quality.

Management perception-service quality specification gap (GAP2): A recurring theme in the executive
interviews in all four service firms was the difficulty

experienced in attempting to match or exceed con-

sumer expectations. Executives cited constraints which

prevent them from delivering what the consumer expects. As an example, executives in the repair service
firm were fully aware that consumers view quick response to appliance breakdowns as a vital ingredient
of high quality service. However, they find it difficult

to establish specifications to deliver quick response

consistently because of a lack of trained service personnel and wide fluctuations in demand. As one executive observed, peak demand for repairing air conditioners and lawnmowers occurs during the summer
months, precisely when most service personnel want
to go on vacation. In this and numerous other situations, knowledge of consumer expectations exists but
the perceived means to deliver to expectations apparently do not.
Apart from resource and market constraints, another reason for the gap between expectations and the
actual set of specifications established for a service is
the absence of total management commitment to service quality. Although the executive interviews indi-

cated a genuine concern for quality on the part of

managers interviewed, this concern may not be generalizable to all service firms. In discussing product

quality, Garvin (1983) stated: ". .. the seriousness

that management attached to quality problems [varies]. It's one thing to say you believe in defect-free
products, but quite another to take time from a busy
schedule to act on that belief and stay informed" (p.
68). Garvin's observations are likely to apply to service businesses as well.

In short, a variety of factors-resource constraints, market conditions, and/or management in-

difference-may result in a discrepancy between

management perceptions of consumer expectations and

the actual specifications established for a service. This

discrepancy is predicted to affect quality perceptions

of consumers:

Proposition 2: The gap between management

perceptions of consumer ex-

pectations and the firm's service quality specifications will

affect service quality from the
consumer's viewpoint.

Service quality specifications-service delivery gap

(GAP3): Even when guidelines exist for performing
services well and treating consumers correctly, high
quality service performance may not be a certainty.
Executives recognize that a service firm's employees
exert a strong influence on the service quality perceived by consumers and that employee performance
cannot always be standardized. When asked what
causes service quality problems, executives consistently mentioned the pivotal role of contact personnel.
In the repair and maintenance firm, for example, one
executive's immediate response to the source of ser-

vice quality problems was, "Everything involves a

person-a repair person. It's so hard to maintain standardized quality."
Each of the four firms had formal standards or

specifications for maintaining service quality (e.g.,

answer at least 90% of phone calls from consumers
within 10 seconds; keep error rates in statements below 1%). However, each firm reported difficulty in
adhering to these standards because of variability in
employee performance. This problem leads to a third

proposition:

Proposition 3: The gap between service qual-

ity specifications and actual

service delivery will affect

service quality from the consumer's standpoint.

Service delivery-external communications gap

(GAP4): Media advertising and other communications
by a firm can affect consumer expectations. If expectations play a major role in consumer perceptions of
service quality (as the services literature contends),
the firm must be certain not to promise more in communications than it can deliver in reality. Promising
more than can be delivered will raise initial expectations but lower perceptions of quality when the promises are not fulfilled.
The executive interviews suggest another perhaps
more intriguing way in which external communications could influence service quality perceptions by

consumers. This occurs when companies neglect to

inform consumers of special efforts to assure quality
that are not visible to consumers. Comments of several executives implied that consumers are not always
aware of everything done behind the scenes to serve

them well.

For instance, a securities brokerage executive

mentioned a "48-hour rule" prohibiting employees from

buying or selling securities for their personal accounts

for the first 48 hours after information is supplied by
the firm. The firm did not communicate this information to its customers, perhaps contributing to a perception that "all the good deals are probably made by
the brokers for themselves" (a perception which sur-

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faced in the securities brokerage focus groups). One

bank executive indicated that consumers were unaware of the bank's behind the counter, on-line teller
terminals which would "translate into visible effects
on customer service." Making consumers aware of not
readily apparent service related standards such as these
could improve service quality perceptions. Consumers
who are aware that a firm is taking concrete steps to
serve their best interests are likely to perceive a delivered service in a more favorable way.
In short, external communications can affect not
only consumer expectations about a service but also
consumer perceptions of the delivered service. Alternatively, discrepancies between service delivery and
external communications-in the form of exaggerated
promises and/or the absence of information about ser-

vice delivery aspects intended to serve consumers

well-can affect consumer perceptions of service

quality.

Proposition 4: The gap between actual ser-

vice delivery and external

communications about the service will affect service quality

from a consumer's standpoint.

Focus Group Interviews

As was true of the executive interviews, the responses
of focus group participants about service quality were
remarkably consistent across groups and across ser-

vice businesses. While some service-specific differ-

ences were revealed, common themes emerged-

themes which offer valuable insights about service

quality perceptions of consumers.

Expected service-perceived service gap (GAP5):

The focus groups unambiguously supported the notion
that the key to ensuring good service quality is meeting or exceeding what consumers expect from the service. One female participant described a situation when
a repairman not only fixed her broken appliance but
also explained what had gone wrong and how she could
fix it herself if a similar problem occurred in the future. She rated the quality of this service excellent be-

cause it exceeded her expectations. A male respondent in a banking services focus group described the
frustration he felt when his bank would not cash his
payroll check from a nationally known employer be-

cause it was postdated by one day. When someone

else in the group pointed out legal constraints preventing the bank from cashing his check, he responded, "Well, nobody in the bank explained that to
me!" Not receiving an explanation in the bank, this
respondent perceived that the bank was unwilling rather

than unable to cash the check. This in turn resulted

in a perception of poor service quality.
Similar experiences, both positive and negative,

were described by consumers in every focus group. It

appears that judgments of high and low service quality
depend on how consumers perceive the actual service
performance in the context of what they expected.
Proposition 5: The quality that a consumer

perceives in a service is a

function of the magnitude and

direction of the gap between

expected service and per-

ceived service.

A Service Quality Model

Insights obtained from the executive interviews and
the focus groups form the basis of a model summarizing the nature and determinants of service quality

as perceived by consumers. The foundation of this

model is the set of gaps discussed earlier and shown

in Figure 1. Service quality as perceived by a consumer depends on the size and direction of GAP5 which,

in turn, depends on the nature of the gaps associated

with the design, marketing, and delivery of services:
services:

Proposition 6: GAPS = f(GAPl,GAP2,GAP3,GAP4)

It is important to note that the gaps on the marketer side of the equation can be favorable or unfavorable from a service quality perspective. That is,
the magnitude and direction of each gap will have an
impact on service quality. For instance, GAP3 will be
favorable when actual service delivery exceeds specifications; it will be unfavorable when service specifications are not met. While proposition 6 suggests a
relationship between service quality as perceived by
consumers and the gaps occurring on the marketer's
side, the functional form of the relationship needs to
be investigated. This point is discussed further in the
last section dealing with future research directions.

The Perceived Service Quality Component

The focus groups revealed that, regardless of the type
of service, consumers used basically similar criteria
in evaluating service quality. These criteria seem to
fall into 10 key categories which are labeled "service

quality determinants" and described in Table 1. For

each determinant, Table 1 provides examples of service specific criteria that emerged in the focus groups.
Table 1 is not meant to suggest that the 10 determinants are non-overlapping. Because the research was
exploratory, measurement of possible overlap across
the 10 criteria (as well as determination of whether

some can be combined) must await future empirical

investigation.
The consumer's view of service quality is shown
in the upper part of Figure 1 and further elaborated in

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TABLE 1

Determinants of Service Quality

RELIABILITY involves consistency of performance and dependability.
It means that the firm performs the service right the first time.

It also means that the firm honors its promises. Specifically, it involves:
-accuracy in billing;
-keeping records correctly;
-performing the service at the designated time.

RESPONSIVENESS concerns the willingness or readiness of employees to provide service. It involves timeliness of service:

-mailing a transaction slip immediately;

-calling the customer back quickly;
-giving prompt service (e.g., setting up appointments quickly).
COMPETENCE means possession of the required skills and knowledge to perform the service. It involves:
-knowledge and skill of the contact personnel;
-knowledge and skill of operational support personnel;
-research capability of the organization, e.g., securities brokerage firm.

ACCESS involves approachability and ease of contact. It means:

-the service is easily accessible by telephone (lines are not busy and they don't put you on hold);
-waiting time to receive service (e.g., at a bank) is not extensive;
-convenient hours of operation;
-convenient location of service facility.
COURTESY involves politeness, respect, consideration, and friendliness of contact personnel (including receptionists,
telephone operators, etc.). It includes:
-consideration for the consumer's property (e.g., no muddy shoes on the carpet);
-clean and neat appearance of public contact personnel.
COMMUNICATION means keeping customers informed in language they can understand and listening to them. It may
mean that the company has to adjust its language for different consumers-increasing the level of sophistication
with a well-educated customer and speaking simply and plainly with a novice. It involves:
-explaining the service itself;
-explaining how much the service will cost;
-explaining the trade-offs between service and cost;
-assuring the consumer that a problem will be handled.
CREDIBILITY involves trustworthiness, believability, honesty. It involves having the customer's best interests at heart.
Contributing to credibility are:
-company name;

-company reputation;

-personal characteristics of the contact personnel;

-the degree of hard sell involved in interactions with the customer.
SECURITY is the freedom from danger, risk, or doubt. It involves:

-physical safety (Will I get mugged at the automatic teller machine?);

-financial security (Does the company know where my stock certificate is?);
-confidentiality (Are my dealings with the company private?).
UNDERSTANDING/KNOWING THE CUSTOMER involves making the effort to understand the customer's needs. It involves:

-learning the customer's specific requirements;

-providing individualized attention;
-recognizing the regular customer.

TANGIBLES include the physical evidence of the service:

-physical facilities;
-appearance of personnel;
-tools or equipment used to provide the service;
-physical representations of the service, such as a plastic credit card or a bank statement;
-other customers in the service facility.

Figure 2. Figure 2 indicates that perceived service portance vis-a-vis consumer perceptions of the delivquality is the result of the consumer's comparison of ered service. However, the general comparison of exexpected service with perceived service. It is quite pections with perceptions was suggested in past research
possible that the relative importance of the 10 deter- on service quality (Gronroos 1982, Lehtinen and Lehminants in molding consumer expectations (prior to tinen 1982) and supported in the focus group interservice delivery) may differ from their relative im- views with consumers. The comparison of expected

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FIGURE 2

Determinants of Perceived Service Quality

In general, offerings high in search properties are

easiest to evaluate, those high in experience properties
more difficult to evaluate, and those high in credence
properties hardest to evaluate. Most services contain
few search properties and are high in experience and
credence properties, making their quality more difficult to evaluate than quality of goods (Zeithaml 1981).
Only two of the ten determinants-tangibles and

credibility-can be known in advance of purchase,

thereby making the number of search properties few.
Most of the dimensions of service quality mentioned
by the focus group participants were experience prop-

erties: access, courtesy, reliability, responsiveness,

understanding/knowing the customer, and communication. Each of these determinants can only be known

as the customer is purchasing or consuming the service. While customers may possess some information
based on their experience or on other customers' evaluations, they are likely to reevaluate these determi-

nants each time a purchase is made because of the

heterogeneity of services.
and perceived service is not unlike that performed by
consumers when evaluating goods. What differs with
services is the nature of the characteristics upon which
they are evaluated.
One framework for isolating differences in evaluation of quality for goods and services is the classification of properties of goods proposed by Nelson

(1974) and Darby and Karni (1973). Nelson distin-

guished between two categories of properties of con-

sumer goods: search properties, attributes which a

consumer can determine prior to purchasing a product, and experience properties, attributes which can
only be discerned after purchase or during consumption. Search properties include attributes such as color,
style, price, fit, feel, hardness, and smell, while experience properties include characteristics such as taste,

wearability, and dependability.

Darby and Kari (1973) added to Nelson's two-

way classification system a third category, credence

properties-characteristics which the consumer may
find impossible to evaluate even after purchase and
consumption. Examples of offerings high in credence
properties include appendectomies and brake relinings

on automobiles. Few consumers possess medical or

mechanical skills sufficient to evaluate whether these

services are necessary or are performed properly, even

after they have been prescribed and produced by the

seller.

Consumers in the focus groups mentioned search,

experience, and credence properties when asked to

describe and define service quality. These aspects of
service quality can be categorized into the 10 service
quality determinants shown in Table 1 and can be arrayed along a continuum ranging from easy to evaluate to difficult to evaluate.

Two of the determinants that surfaced in the focus

group interviews probably fall into the category of

credence properties, those which consumers cannot
evaluate even after purchase and consumption. These
include competence (the possession of the required skills

and knowledge to perform the service) and security

(freedom from danger, risk, or doubt). Consumers are
probably never certain of these attributes, even after
consumption of the service.
Because few search properties exist with services
and because credence properties are too difficult to
evaluate, the following is proposed:

Proposition 7: Consumers typically rely on

experience properties when
evaluating service quality.

Based on insights from the present study, perceived service quality is further posited to exist along
a continuum ranging from ideal quality to totally unacceptable quality, with some point along the continuum representing satisfactory quality. The position of
a consumer's perception of service quality on the continuum depends on the nature of the discrepancy between the expected service (ES) and perceived service
(PS):

Proposition 8: (a) When ES > PS, perceived

quality is less than satisfactory

and will tend toward totally

unacceptable quality, with in-

creased discrepancy between

ES and PS; (b) when ES = PS,
perceived quality is satisfactory; (c) when ES < PS, per-

ceived quality is more than

48 / Journal of Marketing, Fall 1985

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satisfactory and will tend to-

ward ideal quality, with increased discrepancy between

ES and PS.

Directions for Future Research

The proposed service quality model (Figure 1) provides a conceptual framework in an area where little
prior research has been done. It is based on an interpretation of qualitative data generated through a number of in-depth executive interviews and consumer fo-

cus groups-an approach consistent with procedures

recommended for marketing theory development. The
conceptual model and the propositions emerging from
it imply a rich agenda for further research.
First, there is a need and an opportunity to develop

a standard instrument to measure consumers' service

quality perceptions. The authors' exploratory research

revealed 10 evaluative dimensions or criteria which

transcend a variety of services (Table 1). Research is

now needed to generate items or statements to flesh
out the 10 dimensions, to devise appropriate rating
scales to measure consumers' perceptions with respect
to each statement, and to condense the set of state-

ments to produce a reliable and comprehensive but

concise instrument. Further, the statements generated
should be such that with appropriate changes in wording, the same instrument can be used to measure perceived quality for a variety of services.
Second, the main thesis of the service quality model
is that consumers' quality perceptions are influenced
by a series of distinct gaps occurring on the marketers' side. A key challenge for researchers is to devise

methods to measure these gaps accurately. Reliable

and valid measures of these gaps will be necessary for

empirically testing the propositions implied by the

model.

Third, research is needed to examine the nature

of the association between service quality as perceived by consumers and its determinants (GAPS 1-4).
Specifically, are one or more of these gaps more critical than the others in affecting quality? Can creating

one "favorable" gap-e.g., making GAP4 favorable

by employing effective external communications to

create realistic consumer expectations and to enhance

consumer perceptions-offset service quality prob-

across service industries regarding the relative seriousness of service quality problems and their impact
on quality as perceived by consumers? In addition to

offering valuable managerial insights, answers to

questions like these may suggest refinements to the
proposed model.
Fourth, the usefulness of segmenting consumers
on the basis of their service quality expectations is
worth exploring. Although the focus groups consis-

tently revealed similar criteria for judging service

quality, the group participants differed on the relative
importance of those criteria to them, and their expectations along the various quality dimensions. Empirical research aimed at determining whether distinct,

identifiable service quality segments exist will be

valuable from a service marketer's viewpoint. In this
regard, it will be useful to build into the service quality measurement instrument certain statements for ascertaining whether, and in what ways, consumer expectations differ.

Fifth, as shown by Figure 1, expected service-a

critical component of perceived service quality-in
addition to being influenced by a marketer's communications, is shaped by word-of-mouth communi-

cations, personal needs, and past experience. Re-

search focusing on the relative impact of these factors

on consumers' service expectations, within as well as
across service categories, will have useful managerial
implications.

Summary
The exploratory research (focus group and in-depth
executive interviews) reported in this article offers

several insights and propositions concerning consumers' perceptions of service quality. Specifically,

the research revealed 10 dimensions that consumers

use in forming expectations about and perceptions of

services, dimensions that transcend different types of
services. The research also pinpointed four key discrepancies or gaps on the service provider's side that

are likely to affect service quality as perceived by

consumers. The major insights gained through the research suggest a conceptual service quality model that
will hopefully spawn both academic and practitioner
interest in service quality and serve as a framework
for further empirical research in this important area.

lems stemming from other gaps? Are there differences

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