Using service gaps to classify quality attributes

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between the students' perceptions of service performance and the service gaps. The main objective is to investigate whether the relationship can be used for the mapping of quality attributes into four service quality factors. Design/methodology/approach – Using a 37‐item questionnaire developed from Grönroos' Perceived Service Quality model, a survey was carried out to collect primary data to measure the students' perceptions of service quality in a local private higher education institution. Service gaps were computed from the differences between students' perceptions of the services they received and their expectations of the same services. The perception scores were plotted vertically and the service gaps plotted horizontally on a graph with the overall mean perception score as the horizontal axis and the overall mean service gap as the vertical axis. Findings – It appears that the relationship can be used to map the quality attributes into four quality factors, namely satisfier, critical, dissatisfier, and neutral, consistent with the model developed by Johnston and Heineke. Originality/value – This is an alternative method to classify quality attributes using the service gaps data obtained from customer satisfaction surveys through the SERVQUAL instrument or modified versions. Together with the expectation‐service gap grid, both can be used for identifying service shortfalls and prioritisation of service improvement.