1. Significance of Quality in Marketing of Services
1.1 Growing Importance of Services Sector
1.2 The Concept of Service
1.3 Services and the Tangibility Spectrum
1.4 Quality: An Elusive Construct
1.5 Role of Quality in Services
1.6 Economic Worth of Service Quality
1.7 Quality Perspectives of Goods and Services
2. Banking, Hospital and Fast Food Services in India
2.1 Banking Services in India
2.1.1 Banking Sector Reforms
2.1.2 Quality of Banking Services
2.2 Hospital Services
2.2.1 Health Status of India
2.2.2 Quality of Hospital Services
2.3 Services of Fast Food Restaurants
3. Service Quality: Concepts, Measurement and Dimensionality
3.1 Conceptualization of Service Quality
3.1.1 Service Quality: Difficult to Define
3.1.2 Gap Model of Service Quality
3.2 Service Quality Measurement
3.2.1 SERVQUAL Scale
3.2.2 Servqual Application Contexts
3.2.3 The Role of Expectations in Disconfirmation Model
3.2.4 The Problematic Status of Expectations
3.2.5 An Alternative to SERVQUAL
3.2.6 Use of Disconfirmation versus Perception-Only Model of Service Quality
3.2.7 Literature Supporting the Use of Perception-Only Scores
3.2.8 The Weighted Models of Service Quality Measurement
3.2.9 Importance-Performance Analysis
3.3 Dimensionality of Service Quality Construct
3.3.1 Service Quality Attributes
3.3.2 Service Quality Dimensions Identified in Existing Literature
3.3.3 Dimensionality of Servqual Model
3.3.4 Need for Scale Adaptation
3.4 Concluding Remarks
4. Service Quality and Related Constructs: A Conceptual Framework
4.1 Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction
4.2 Concept of Service Value
4.3 Convergent Literature: The Interrelationships
4.4 Causal Ordering of Relationships
5. Research Methodology
5.1 Data Source and Sample Design
5.1.1 Data Sources
5.1.2 Service Context
5.1.3 The Sample
5.2 Qualitative Phase: Pilot Survey
5.3 Quantitative Phase: Questionnaire Development
5.4 Measures Needed for the Study
5.5 Analysis Techniques
5.6 Data Analysis Procedure
6. Empirical Validation of the Service Quality Construct
6.1 Scale Development
6.1.1 Scale Purification
6.1.2 Final Extended Servqual Scale
6.1.3 Assessment of Reliability
6.2 Aggregative Analysis
6.2.1 Assessing Factor Structure for Servqual Scale
6.2.2 Exploring Dimensions for the Extended Model
6.3 Industry-Specific Analysis of Dimensionality
6.4 Existing Servqual versus the Extended Model
6.5 Dimensionality Analysis as per Servqual Scale
6.6 Comparative Evaluation of the Alternative Measurement Scales of Service Quality
6.6.1 Validity of Alternative Measurement Scales
6.6.2 Assessing the Explanatory Power of the Alternate Measurement Scales
6.7 Assessing the Quality of Services Provided by the Three Sectors
6.7.1 Assessment of Banking Services
6.7.2 Assessment of Hospital Services
6.7.3 Assessment of Fast Food Restaurants
6.8 Need for Improvement in Service Quality
6.9 Importance-Performance Mapping
6.9.1 Analysis of Banks
6.9.2 Analysis of Hospitals
6.9.3 Analysis of Fast Food Restaurants
6.10 Assessing Overall Quality, Customer Satisfaction, Value and Behavioural Intentions
7. Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations
7.1 Summary of the Research Issues
7.2 The Study
7.3 Major Findings of the Study
7.4 Conclusions and Recommendations
7.5 Areas for Future Research
Appendix: Techniques Used for Correlation Analysis
Bibliography; Index
