Study on Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction with Travel Agencies in Ethiopia

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Date

2014-06

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Publisher

Addis Ababa University

Abstract

The research was conducted to investigate the perceived service quality of travel agencies in Ethiopia and its implication on customer satisfaction from the perspective of customers who in this case are air travelers. The SERVQUAL model with five dimensions namely Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy was used with slight modification on the 22 service attributes to fit travel agency scenario. Data gathered from 207 usable questionnaires was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools. It was found out that travel agencies fell short of expectation in all the 22 attributes, hence in all the dimensions and overall perceived quality. The highest negative gap score was registered for Reliability dimension followed by Responsiveness. It was also discovered that there is no major difference in perceived service quality with a difference in purpose of trip or frequency of usage of travel agency. Overall satisfaction was also measured with a score ranging from 1(highly dissatisfied) to 5(highly satisfied) and the average result obtained was 3.62 showing that customers are slightly satisfied with the overall service despite the negative gap score in over all perceived quality. The linear regression analysis conducted by taking overall customer satisfaction as dependant variable and the five dimensions as independent variables, showed that perceived service quality explains 38.9% of the variation in customer satisfaction. The detailed analysis showed that only Reliability and Responsiveness dimensions are the important factors affecting customer satisfaction. Therefore, travel agencies need to improve their service quality by educating travel agents in the areas of customer handling, product knowledge, and good industry practice

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Keywords

Travel agency, Service Quality, Customer satisfaction

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