Expectation and Perception of Students For Service Quality in Bahir Dar University
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Date
2011-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Service quality has become predominant part of all advanced organization's strategic plan.
Higher attention on service quality has resulted in increasing and profit of organizations.
Higher education possesses all the characteristics of service industry such as intangibility,
reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. According to some scholars, the
strategic success of a service organization depends on its ability to consistently meet or
exceed customer service expectations. It is apparent that there is a need to measure
students' perceptions of service quality at the college of business and economics in Bahir
Dar University. To investigate students' expectation and perceptions of service quality,
descriptive survey study has been conducted and a study was guided by four objectives.
These objectives were: firstly, to identify students' expectations in terms of higher
educational services provided; secondly, to ascertain the perceptions of students towards
the service of the college of business and economics provides; thirdly, to measure the gaps
between the expectations and perceptions, using the modified SERVQUAL score, and
fourthly, to measure the score of the seven SERVQUAL dimensions. The instrument used to
assess the students' expectation and perceptions of service quality was the modified
SERVQUAL questionnaire, measuring expectations and perceptions according to the seven
service quality dimensions. The finding shows high reliability to all items in the modified
questionnaires. This indicated that gap scores, as produced by this scale are valid
measurement for overall satisfaction of undergraduate students with the delivery of services
by the college of business and economics. The result also showed that the gap of all
dimension of service quality were negative (students' expectations of service quality
exceeded their perceptions). "Delivery" and "tangibility" were identified as the most
critical dimension for the college of business and economics in Bahir Dar University. Thus,
improvements are required across all seven dimension of service quality especially
"empathy" and "delivery
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Keywords
Students; Service Quality