Service Quality: Research Perspectives / Edition 1

by Benjamin Schneider, Susan Schoenberger White

Overview

The last three decades have seen a dramatic increase in the attention businesses devote to their quality of service. Scholars and researchers in a number of disciplines, including marketing, human resources I/O psychology, sociology, and consumer behavior, have all made substantial contributions to understanding what service is, how service and service delivery quality are experienced by customers, and the role of employees and their organizations in service delivery. Service Quality: Research Perspectives presents a comprehensive overview and analysis of the field and its research, including its growth, emerging trends, and debates

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761921462
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	11/20/2003
Series:	Foundations for Organizational Science , #107
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Susan S. White is a Research Scientist with the Washington, D.C. office of Personnel Decisions Research Institutes, Inc. She received her M. A. (1998) and Ph.D. (2000) in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Maryland, and her B.A. in Psychology and Mathematical Economic Analysis from Rice University in 1994. Dr. White’s current work focuses primarily on the design and implementation of human resources systems in organizations, including selection, performance management, and training programs. She has worked extensively also in the area of service climate and service quality and has published her work on these topics in the Journal of Applied Psychology, and the Journal of Service Research.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction
Approach Of The Book
What Are Services
What Is Quality?
Why Is the Study Of Service Quality Important?
Overview Of The Rest Of The Book
Chapter 2 Conceptualization And Measurement Of Service Quality: Marketing Perspectives
Dimensions Of Service Quality
Gap Models And The Role Of Expectations In Service Quality
Overall Service Quality
Service Quality And Customer Satisfaction
Survey Development: An Integrated Perspective
Chapter 3 Service Operations And The Presence Of The Customer
The Customer Contact Model Of Service Delivery
Classification Of Services By Christopher Lovelock
Potential Benefits Of Customer Co-Production
Managing Variability Through A Focus On The Customer
Reducing Variability Through A Focus On The Facility
Linking Operational Procedures To Service Quality And Profits
Revenue Management
Chapter 4 A Service Climate
Defining Climate
Climate For Service
Linkage Research
Creating A Service Climate
Chapter 5 Where Are We And Where Do We Go From Here?
How Customers And Service Are Viewed In The Different Fields
Integrated Approaches From Services Management
Introducing Service Quality Into HR/OB
Conclusion: Future Research Agenda

Editorial Reviews

This book is not a ‘one-minute’ guide for managers in search of alleged quick-fixes of service quality. Instead, it is thirty years of accumulated theory and research that can help serious students understand and analyze this complex phenomenon. The book succeeds in embedding the often overlooked customer within organization studies, using the interdisciplinary approach that scholars preach but seldom practice, and closing with an agenda for future research that others might even find worth pursuing.

David E. Bowen

"At any point in time a limited number of research-based volumes will rise to the top of one's reading list. This reviewer predicts that this volume will be one of them for readers interested in the topic of service quality. Schneider and White combine their academic and professional expertise to present a highly intense, exceedingly well researched literature review on service quality. Clearly beyond the course text market, this volume is a must for one or more of the organizational sciences."

Choice

"At any point in time a limited number of research-based volumes will rise to the top of one's reading list. This reviewer predicts that this volume will be one of them for readers interested in the topic of service quality. Schneider and White combine their academic and professional expertise to present a highly intense, exceedingly well researched literature review on service quality. Clearly beyond the course text market, this volume is a must for one or more of the organizational sciences. "

Choice Magazine

"The coverage is excellent. Among other things, it does a nice job of providing a rationale for why researchers and managers need to understand the perspectives of their customers."

Susan E. Jackson

"Schneider and White promise to deliver insight into the intriguing intricacies of providing excellent services. They deliver sagacity, the intelligent application of knowledge. They do this by being eclectic, disciplined, and thoughtful... Facts about service – what it is, how it happens, what is required to make it better – thankfully dominate this book, supported by good thinking and good methods. No one interested in service quality should miss this book. There is no other book like it."

Rick Guzzo