An empirical case study on the service quality for traditional chinese medical clinics

Part of : WSEAS transactions on business and economics ; Vol.6, No.12, 2009, pages 591-604

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Pages:
591-604
Author:
Abstract:
Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry introduced “A Service Quality Model.” and further explored thegap between expected quality customers having before receiving the service and perceived quality customersregarding after receiving the service (they call this gap as the perceived service quality gap). In theirmethodology, customers are asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding both expected and perceived serviceafter they received the service. Since both expected and perceived service quality are rated in one singlequestionnaire, it is questionable that the results obtained can effectively convey the differences of the gap asoriginally defined. This research proposed a Service Quality Diagnosis Model to re-explore the perceivedservice quality gap. A traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinic in Taiwan is used as an example todemonstrate the proposed approach. The first stage of the proposed approach involved developing a suitablescale containing the key service factors to measure the service quality of TCM clinics. The second phase of theproposed approach explored the service quality of the case TCM clinic by analyzing the results obtained fromquestionnaire filled out by its patients. Different from any exist approach, respondents need to fill out twoquestionnaires separately before and after they receive services. The proposed research successfully dividedperceived service quality into three types: ideal quality, unacceptable quality and satisfactory quality. As withenterprise diagnosis, the research results can effectively help managers to identify abnormalities in currentservice quality and further to recommend in-time solutions to the problems or countermeasures for continuousimprovement.
Subject:
Subject (LC):
Keywords:
service quality, expected service, perceived service, traditional chinese medicine clinic
Notes:
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