defined in a variety of ways. Therefore there is no universal and parsimonious definition of quality. Reeves and
Bednar (1994) summarized different definitions of quality as follows: (a) quality as excellence, (b) quality as value,
(c) quality as conformance to specification, and (d) quality as meeting or exceeding customer’s expectations (5).
The interest in service quality has been influential in contributing significantly to the growth of the general
services marketing field. In business literature, the customer’s perception of quality has been the major focus in
studies completed on service quality. Hence service quality is often conceptualized as the comparison of service
expectations with actual performance perceptions (6). On an operational level, research on service quality has been
dominated by the SERVQUAL instrument, which is based on a so-called gap model. Gap model is recognized today
as a major contribution to the service management literature (7).
SERVQUAL is designed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry to measure service quality as perceived by
the customer. Parasuraman et al.’s measure of service quality was based on Oliver’s disconfirmation model. In the
disconfirmation theory, the perception of service quality is conceptualized as a comparison of the expected level of
service and the actual service performance. Expectations are the wants of consumers, that is, what they feel a service
provider should offer. Perceptions refer to the consumers’ evaluation of the service provider (8). Therefore, if the
customer’s performance perceptions exceed the customer expectations, then the service provider provides quality
service. The difference in scores determines the level of service quality.