Parasuraman et al. (1985) said “Service quality is determined by the differences between
customer’s expectations of services provider’s performance and their evaluation of the services
they received”.
Service Quality was also defined by Asubonteng et al. (1996) as “the difference between
customer’s expectations for service performance prior to the service encounter and their
perceptions of the service received”.
It is an estimation of how well a delivered service fulfils a customer’s expectation.
It is perceived service performance versus customer expectations.
The importance of service quality cannot be over emphasized, especially in the current
competitive and liberated marketing space.
The easy and wide access to products and markets via electronic channels has helped increase
customer sophistication and demand means and Technological marketing era.
Customers are smarter, have more power and higher expectations than ever before.
A business with high service quality will meet or exceed customer expectations whilst
remaining economically competitive.( http://asq.org/services/why-quality/overview.html ASQ
The Global voice of Quality)
Service quality is therefore a big game changer for the business owner.
Service quality estimates enable businesses to understand and improve their operational
processes, identify and solve problems quickly, become economically competitive and
ultimately measure customer satisfaction.
Businesses can use the Gap Model of Service Quality which proposed by A. Parasuraman, V.
Zeithaml and L. Berry to enable them understand customer satisfaction.
The model suggests that customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction is attributable to the non–
existence or otherwise of four gaps or variations.
A lot of factors affect the magnitude of expression of these four gaps. However, most of these
factors comprise:
(1) Communication and control processes to manage employees
(2) Consequences of these processes, which impede role clarity and the resolution of conflicting
role expectations among customer facing staff.
In order to explain the Gap Model of Service Quality, I would apply the concept to the services
of the community pharmacy in my neighborhood, North Legon, one of the fastest growing
districts of Accra in Ghana.
From time to time, my family and I access services at the pharmacy like prescription filling, over
the counter medicine services, consultation based services, health care management programs
and medication reviews.
This pharmacy is actually the first pharmacy established in the area and so it enjoyed a
comfortable market share of the business in the area until in recent times when new pharmacy
businesses started coming to set up too in the area. This situation gives customers including
me, more options to choose the best service with the reasonable price they require.
The four gaps are explained below:
GAP 1
This is also known as the Knowledge Gap. It is the variation between the customer’s
expectations of the service and the service provider’s delivery of that service. This gap results
from when the service provider is oblivious of what the customer expects of the service. Some
of the causes of this gap are as discussed below:
In the situation of the community pharmacy, the Knowledge Gap is expressed where the
pharmacy out of ignorance does not provide services such as checking of blood pressure and
blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels and malaria rapid diagnostic test, but instead directs
