Shippers' Perceived Service Quality And Satisfaction: A Case Study of Ethiopian Shipping Lines
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Date
2008-06
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A.A.U
Abstract
Research Purpose: The central purpose of this research project is to identify service
Quality gaps, assess overall service quality of transportation service provided by
Ethiopian shipping lines and level of satisfaction in views of customers and finally to
Explore the causal relationship among service quality dimensions and overall service
quality and satisfaction.
Research Methodology: The seven modified dimensions of SERVQUAL namely,
Tangibles, reliability, assurance, empathy, service coverage and
Schedule, and process (which consists of items totaling 27) was used to measure
Customers' perceptions and expectations of the quality of maritime transport service on a
7-poinl liker type scale representing ", strong disagreement" and 7 representing
"Strong agreement ", the entire research was conducted using primary data directly
Elicited from, the modified SERVQUAL model instrument adapted to fit in
The context of the study were distributed to 35 companies engaged in import business
Activities and 32 complete and, usable questionnaire were collected for further' analysis
With collection rate of 91.4%
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Findings: Reliability anal was done to assess the internal consistency of the sale
And it resulted in overall reliability he gap coefficient (chronbatch alpha )of 0.943.regarding
The service quality gaps identified the highest quality gap was observed in the process
Aspect (-4.09), for owed by service coverage and schedule (-3.42), reliability (-3,02),
Empathy (-283), responsiveness (-2.79), tangibles (-2.64), and the least was absorbed in
The assurance dimension with gap scares of -2.60. The other investigation areas of this
Research is determining the causal relationship among modified SERVQUAL dimensions,
Overall service quality and level of satisfaction and ultimately develop\a regression
model. Two regression models were found for overall service quality. The first model in
Which assurance was considered as a single statistically significant predictor, explains
31.1%of the variations in overall service quality.
In the second model both assurance and reliability were considered together as
Significant predictors. Explains 52.4% of the variation in overall service quality.
Similarly, the study also found two models for overall customer satisfaction. The first
Model where reliability was considered the only statistically significant, explains 34.3%
Of the variation in the overall level of customer satisfaction where as in the second model
Both reliability and assurance were considered and it explains 42.8% of the variation in
The level customer sat is/action.
Managerial implications: Because the service quality scores for all the modified
SERVQUAL dimensions were found to be negative and very high which calls maximum
effort from the company to at least narrow down these wider gaps. Furthermore, the
Fact that both Reliability and Assurance dimensions are strong predictors of both
Overall service quality and satisfaction necessitates emphasis to be given to these quality
Dimensions if the company is to enhance the dependent variables
Description
Keywords
Perceived, Service