An empirical assessment and application of SERVQUAL in a Mainland Chinese department store

Abstract

More and more retailers in Mainland China are trying to differentiate their services through quality improvement. In this paper, we report upon the application of SERVQUAL in service quality improvement at a department store in Tianjin, a city in Northern China. We shall also assess the reliability and validity of the SERVQUAL instrument using data collected from this department store. The improvement effort included comparisons of service quality as perceived by both external customers and internal employees, identification of areas for improvements through focus group discussion of the survey results, and development of a plan for improvements. Statistical analyses of the survey response from this company were also performed to test the validity of the SERVQUAL instrument and the applicability of the five dimensions of service quality in the Chinese retail industry. The results indicate that the gap scores did not merge into five dimensions of service quality; rather, the perception scores roughly merged into six dimensions. The findings from this study indicate that the SERVQUAL instrument and the five dimensions of service quality may not be applicable to the retail sector of Mainland China and further research is necessary to understand service quality in Mainland China.

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