A Gap Analysis of Professional Service Quality

Abstract

Providers of professional services recently have awakened to consumer challenges, competition, and the realities of marketing. With these changes, a related and equally important issue has emerged—service quality and evaluating the service encounter. Using medical services as the primary study setting, the authors explore the concept of professional services quality and its evaluation from both the provider and client perspectives. They use gap analysis as an appropriate approach for examining the evaluation of a professional service. The findings provide special empirical insights on the gaps that can arise from inconsistent perceptions of expectations and experiences between patients and physicians. Finally, both managerial and research implications are presented.

Measurement of patient satisfaction as an outcome of regional anesthesia and analgesia: A systematic review

“…15 A related concept is gap analysis, where identification of differences between provider and patient perceptions of services occurs. 17 Addressing potential gaps, which may occur as providers focus primarily on delivery of medical care whereas patients focus on services used, may increase patient satisfaction. 1 Thus, there is no universally accepted theory of patient satisfaction, and many theories have been derived from work in the arena of marketing research and consumer satisfaction.…”

The glory of stories: Using critical incidents to understand service evaluation in the primary healthcare context

“…In terms of the evaluative matrix presented above, it could be argued that the core part of the service product is in the clinical response to illness, whilst the peripheral parts are associated with the process of care (see Ware et a/. 1977;Brown and Swartz 1989;John 1992). Evaluation of the clinical aspect of the service is particularly complex for individual patients but the impact of it upon overall satisfaction is unquestionable, i.e.…”

“…the doctor (see, for instance. Brown and Swartz 1989). However, in the UK, the norm is for doctors to operate in group practices which incorporate a wide range of healthcare professionals.…”

Perceived service quality and medical outcome: An interdisciplinary review and suggestions for future research

“…Among the notable contributions which attempt to define and model service quality are Lehtinen and Lehtinen (1982), Gronroos ( , 1984, Lewis and Booms (1983) Parasuraman et al (1985, Zeithaml et al (1988Zeithaml et al ( , 1993, Berry et al (1988), Le Blanc and Nyugen (1988), Brown and Swartz (1989), Swartz and Brown (1989), Carman (1990) and Cronin and Taylor (1992). Specific contributions in the context of medical services include Schlegelmilch et al (1992), Joby (1992), Mowen et al (1993) and Walbridge and Delene (1993).…”

“…Zeithaml et al (1988) suggest that the four service quality gaps on the marketer's side be examined in order to determine which is/are most critical in explaining service quality variation and to ascertain the main organizational factors responsible D. E. Mur/in et al for the size of the gaps. Brown and Swartz (1989) note that empirical work assessing the impact of each individual quality dimension is lacking. They also suggest that the roles played by process and outcome quality in professional service evaluation warrant some attention and that an attempt should be made to determine if and how the image of the service provider affects customer evaluations.…”