Title:
Analysis of the Interactive Service Quality Gap and the Organizational Dependence Dimensions of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Hong Kong
1. Introduction
Service with a smile used to be enough to satisfy the customers. However, nowadays, some service firms would like to differentiate themselves in the marketplace by offering a service guarantee. Nevertheless, the service quality is a complex topic.
Service quality is an important construct in service marketing, industrial marketing, relationship marketing and consumer marketing. The various dimensions of a relationship interact and self-organize into a mutually consistent pattern of performance, perceptions, and attitudes (Svensson 2004[1]). Therefore, the service providers have to measure the gap between the expected service and perceived service in order to gain the customer satisfaction.
While, the dependence between business activities in supply chains leads to the necessity of cooperation between companies in order to achieve internal and mutual goals (Lambert et al., 1998[2]; Hakansson and Snehota, 1995[3]).
In order to stay competitive, maintain cost-effectiveness and achieve reasonable profitability, the three selected Hong Kong SMEs have to take into consideration time and relationship dependencies towards suppliers and customers.
In this report, a hierarchy of priorities, the interactive service quality- “on-the-spot” account and Hammarkvist’s dependence dimensions were being analysed. Moreover, some ways for improvement were being proposed.
2. Interactive Service Quality
Nowadays, service quality is more important. It may be regarded as an afterthought in the past. However, now, the customers not only seek for the explicit services received, but also the satisfaction gain from the service delivery process. Therefore, service quality is a key issue for assessing the customer satisfaction in this century.
Satisfied customers are the driving forces lead to the...