Importance and Performance Analysis of Service

Quality among Business Students: An Exploratory

Study in Pakistan
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 Importance and Performance Analysis of Service Quality
Among Business Students: An Exploratory Study in Pakistan

Abstract
This research survey was undertaken to investigate the importance of service attributes
and evaluation of service quality of lecturers from the business students perspectives
using SERVQUAL attributes in a modified Importance-Performance Analysis Model.
Twenty two attributes which are subdivided into five key dimensions of SERVQUAL
model: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, are considered.
The results indicate that the most important dimension is assurance, while the least
important dimension is reliability. The results also revealed that all students’ importance
means of services attributes were higher than their performance means.

Keywords: Service quality, lecturers, Importance-Performance, business students

1. Introduction
Assessing the performance of service quality is indeed crucial in determining the standard
of quality and the overall satisfaction for firms or organizations that provide services. In
higher institutions such as universities, the delivery performance of service quality will
determine the number of student’s enrolment into the universities. Students as consumers
in this case, tend to select places that could provide them with high quality services
education and high satisfaction.
Moreover, customer-focused corporate culture has gained popularity and many have
recognized the importance of getting to know the customer-needs and requirements. In
the service quality literature, SERVQUAL model (Parasuraman et. al., 1988) has been
used by many researchers to include manufacturing (Anbalagan, 1995), financial services
(Arasli et. al., 2005) and education (Soutar and McNeil, 1996; Kitcharoen, 2004).
Through numerous qualitative researches, the SERVQUAL model was later based on a
set of five dimensions, which have been consistently ranked by customers to be the most
important for SQ, regardless of service industry. These dimensions are:
i. Tangibility (the appearance of physical facilities, equipments, personnel, and
communication materials),
ii. Reliability (the ability to perform the promised service dependably and
accurately),
iii. Responsive (the willingness to help customers and to provide prompt service),
iv. Assurance (the knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to
convey trust and confidence) and
v. Empathy (the provision of caring, individualized attention to customers). A
total of 22-item instrument was developed to measure customers expectations
and perceptions of the five dimensions.

This study was undertaken to examine the importance of service attributes and how
lecturers performed from the business students perspectives. In addition, the study also
looked at the overall service quality provided and students satisfaction.

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2. Literature Review
Many of the researches on service quality have been carried out within the framework of
widely accepted service quality model (SERVQUAL instrument) developed by extensive
research by Parasuraman et. al. (1985, 1988, and 1990). Since then, many researchers
have used their 22- item scale to study service quality in different sectors of the services
industry including financial institutions (Gounaris et. al. 2003; Jabnoun and Al-Tamimi
2003; Arasli et. al. 2005), educational services (Soutar and McNeil, 1996; Kitcharoen,
2004) and hair salon industry (Jean and Walker, 2000).

Later, the SERVQUAL attributes were adapted and modified to measure service quality
using Importance-Performance Analysis. The Importance-Performance Analysis was first
introduced by Martilla and James (1977) for automobile dealer s service. They rated the
importance on a four-point scale; extremely important, important, slightly important, and
not important.

Performance was also rated under four-point scale; excellent, good, fair and poor. The
results were then demonstrated in the form of matrix of four quadrants as follows;

i. Concentrate Here (High Importance, Low Performance)

a. Customer believes a specific attribute is very important but performance is lacking

ii. Keep Up the Good Work (High Importance, High Performance)

a. Customer believes specific attribute is very important and they are satisfied with the
performance

iii. Low Priority (Low Importance, Low Performance)

a. Customer is not satisfied with the performance of a specific attribute but the
attribute is relatively unimportant

iv. Possible overkill (Low Importance, High Performance)

a. Customer is satisfied with the performance but the specific attribute is relatively
unimportant.

3. Methodology
The questionnaires were designed based on the work of Kitcharoen (2004). The 22-item
under
Five dimensions were as follows:
i. Tangibility (Statements 1 - 3)
ii. Reliability (Statements 4 - 6)
iii. Responsiveness (Statements 7- 9)
iv. Assurance (Statements 10 - 16)
v. Empathy (Statements 17 - 22)

This testing was conducted using 300 students taking Bachelor in Business
Administration, in the Faculty of Foundation University, APCOMS and Fatima Jinaah

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Women University. The students were guided throughout the survey for clarification. The
questionnaires consist of three parts;
• Part One relates to Importance of the service quality attributes (How important are
these service quality attributes?),
• Part Two relates to performance (How well did the lecturers perform?) of the
service quality attributes.
• Part Three relates to overall perceived service quality offered by lecturers and
their overall perceived satisfaction towards the services offered.

These items were measured using a 5-point, Likert-type format with the following
anchors: 1 = very low, 2 = low, 3 = neither low nor high, 4 = high and 5 = very high.
Internal consistency of the study was demonstrated using Cronbach s alpha.
Descriptive statistics (percentages, means and paired t-test) were used in this study.

4. Results
4.1 Reliability Analysis
Reliability of the measures was assessed with the use of Cronbach alpha. The closer
Cronbach s alpha coefficient is to 1.0 the greater the internal consistency of the items in
the scale. As a general rule, the alpha coefficients for each of the dimensions under
Importance and Performance as well overall alpha coefficients were computed. The
results of all these analyses are shown in Table 1.

The results show that the Cronbach s alpha coefficients of service quality dimensions
under Importance and Performance were satisfactory with the exception of alpha
coefficient of tangibility dimension under Performance (0.410). However, the overall
alpha coefficients under Importance and Performance were high, 0.948 and 0.902
respectively.

4.2 Service Importance and Performance

After the reliability test, 300 questioners were distributed among the three universities
and responses were collected. Based on the mean analysis, students gave high importance
to service assurance. Business Students placed high importance on the knowledge,
courtesy and the ability of lecturers to convey trust and confidence in delivering service.

The second of importance was related to empathy, followed by responsiveness,

tangibility and reliability. With regard to performance of service attributes, Table 2
showed that service assurance was also ranked first followed by reliability, tangibility,
empathy and responsiveness. Further examination showed that as an overall, the
Importance means for all dimensions were higher than the Performance means.

Table 2 shows the findings of gap score between Importance and Performance of services
attributes among business students. As can be seen from the table, the results showed that
all students Importance means were higher than the Performance means.

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Translating the findings in terms of Quadrant as in Figure-1, 20 items fell under Quadrant
B (i.e. good, keep up the good work), one item i.e. item 8 Ease of contact (accessible at
any time) of the lecturers fell under Quadrant A (i.e., not good enough and concentrate
here) while item 22 Lecturers pay attention to individual needs of students , was close to
the boundary between Quadrant A and Quadrant B. Table 2 also presents the results for
the t-test that we used to examine the statistical difference between the responses (i.e., the
means) with regard to students responses of both service quality Importance and
Performance.

In the Table, all attributes were significantly different from their performance means at
0.01 level, except for attribute 4 (reliability and dependability). The results also showed
that all Importance means of services attributes were significantly higher than their
Performance means. Moreover, attribute 8 (ease of contact) showed that students
Importance mean of services attribute was high (4.27) but the Performance mean was low
(2.95). In addition, the result also showed that the students Importance mean for attribute
22 (Staff members pay attention to individual needs of student) was high (4.32) but the
Performance mean was neither low nor high (3.00). Such differences between the
responses should send an important message to the faculty concerned with regards to how
students rate the importance of the service quality attributes and how they perceived
lecturers performance.

4.3 Students Satisfaction

Table 3 presents the overall service quality and satisfaction towards the lecturers from the
business students perspectives. The results showed that 18.2 percent of the total
respondents stated that the overall service quality was low, 54.6 percent stated that it was
neither high nor low, 27.3 percent stated that it was high. The overall mean of service
quality was 3.09 out of 5. In terms of overall satisfaction, 13.6 percent stated that
satisfaction was low, 63.6 percent stated that it was neither low nor high, 18.2 percent
stated that it was high and 4.6 percent stated that it was very high. The overall mean of
students satisfaction was 3.14 out of 5.

5. Conclusion
This study was carried out to examine business students importance of service quality
attributes and evaluation of performance. This study revealed the following main
findings;
• The Importance means were higher than their Performance means and that there
were significant difference in means of the service quality attributes except for
one attribute i.e., reliability and dependability (the degree of trust in service
delivery) of the lecturers. Further, the results also indicated that improvement
should be made on ease of contact (accessible at any time) of the lecturers as
shown by the high Importance mean (4.27) and low Performance mean (2.95).
These findings may be concluded that overall, business students perceived the
service quality provided by the lecturers was good (keep up the good work).
• However, they suggested that lecturers should improve on the ease of contact.

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Results of this study indicate that Importance-Performance model could be used as a
promising model in assuring good service quality in higher education settings. Since this
is a limited study, future research should incorporate greater sample sizes and, use factor
analysis on the service quality attributes to improve the Cronbach s alpha coefficients.
This will offer greater insight into the appropriateness of using SERVQUAL attributes in
Importance Performance Analysis model in the context of a university.

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References
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Greek Cypriot Banking Industry . Managing Service Quality. Vol. 15(1), pp 41-576

Anbalagan K. (1995), Consumers Perception on Quality of Service in Malaysian

Telecommunication Industry, Unpublished Master s Thesis, UPM, Serdang, Malaysia.
Ellis C. L., and Vogelsong H., 2003, Measuring Birdwatcher Preferences Through
Importance- Performance Analysis, Proceedings of the 2003 Northeastern Recreation
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Ennew C. T., Reed G. V., and Binks M. R., 1992, Importance-Performance Analysis and
the Measurement of Service Quality, European Journal of Marketing, vol. 27(2), pp. 59-
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Perceived Service Quality: An Exploratory Study in the Banking Industry , International
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Jabnoun N. and Al-Tamimi A.H. (2002), Measuring Perceived Service Quality at UAE
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Jean l., and Walker, H., 2000, Service Quality in the Hair Salon Industry, Journal of
BusinessDisciplines vol. l, pp. 37-52.

Joseph. M., Sekhon Y., Stone G., and Tinson J., 2005, An Exploratory Study on the Use
of Banking Technology in the UK, A Ranking Importance of Selected Technology on
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Kitcharoen K., 2004, The Importance-Performance Analysis of Service Quality in

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24(3) pp. 20-46.

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Marketing, Vol. 41(1), pp. 77-79

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Implications for Future Research, Journal of Marketing. 49(3), pp. 41-50.

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Measuring Consumer Perceptions of SQ, Journal of Retailing, 64(2). pp. 12-40.

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Slack N. 1994, The Importance-Performance Matrix as a Determinant of Improvement
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 Annexure

Service Quality Importance Performance

Attribute
Mean Standard α Mean Standard α
Deviation Deviation
Tangibility 4.303 0.701 0.641 3.409 0.723 0.410
Reliability 4.136 0.654 0.769 3.455 0.612 0.654
Responsiveness 4.364 0.671 0.818 3.167 0.597 0.618
Assurance 4.448 0.657 0.913 3.636 0.635 0.790
Empathy 4.424 0.678 0.863 3.288 0.796 0.888
Overall Score 4.368 0.676 0.948 3.421 0.705 0.902
Table 1: Description Statistics of the Importance-Performance of the Service
Quality Attribute and Cronbach`s Alpha Values

No. Service Attributes I P Quadra I–P t-value Sig.

Mean Mean nt (2-tailed)
1 Visual Appearance (neat & clean) 4.136 3.727 B 0.41 2.881 0.009**
of the lecturer matters (0.64) (0.46)
2 Having suitable buildings, places 4.318 3.182 B 1.14 4.926 0.000**
and facilities for effective (0.78) (0.73)
services
3 Cleanliness & safety of buildings, 4.455 3.318 B 1.14 4.568 0.000**
places & facilities (0.67) (0.84)

4 Reliability & dependability (the 4.000 3.636 B 0.36 1.891 0.073

degree of trust in service (0.69) (0.58)
delivery) of the lecturers
5 Consistency of service by 4.273 3.409 B 0.86 4.305 0.000**
lecturers (The level of service (0.63) (0.67)
delivery is maintained)
6 Attention to details of the service 4.136 3.318 B 0.82 4.827 0.000**
delivery by the lecturers (0.64) (0.57)

7 Willingness of the lecturers to 4.409 3.136 B 1.27 5.542 0.000**

provide services in a timely (0.67) (0.64)
manner
8 Ease of contact (accessible at any 4.273 2.955 A 1.32 6.217 0.000**
time) of the lecturers (0.70) (0.58)

9 Ability of the lecturers to provide 4.409 3.409 B 1.00 6.205 0.000**

services in a timely manner (0.67) (0.50)
(within a certain time as
promised)
10 Competence (knowledge and 4.409 3.591 B 0.82 4.500 0.000**
skill) of the lecturers (0.67) (0.50)

11 Levels of courtesy, politeness and 4.455 3.591 B 0.86 4.557 0.000**

respect received (0.74) (0.73)

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12 Believability and honesty of the 4.500 3.545 B 0.95 4.482 0.000**
lecturers (0.67) (0.74)
13 Knowledge of the information 4.455 3.773 B 0.68 3.382 0.003**
that I need from the lecturers (0.67) (0.61)

14 Assurance that the lecturers keep 4.318 3.773 B 0.55 4.294 0.000**
the academic and personal (0.65) (0.61)
information in the service
delivery confidential
15 Assurance that information 4.545 3.591 B 0.95 4.713 0.000**
communicated is correct and up- (0.60) (0.73)
to-date in the service delivery
16 Lecturers have knowledge and 4.455 3.591 B 0.86 4.557 0.000**
necessary service skills (0.67) (0.50)

17 Lecturers communicate with me 4.455 3.864 B 0.59 3.052 0.006**

in a language that I could (0.60) (0.89)
understand easily
18 Approachability (friendliness and 4.318 3.227 B 1.09 4.446 0.000**
warmth) of lecturers (0.65) (0.69)

19 Effort of the lecturers to 4.545 3.182 B 1.36 6.100 0.000**

understand my needs (0.60) (0.80)

20 Sincere interest in servicing the 4.455 3.227 B 1.23 5.642 0.000**

students (0.67) (0.75)

21 Sincere interest in solving the 4.455 3.227 B 1.23 5.400 0.000**

problems of students (0.74) (0.75)

22 Lecturers pay attention to 4.318 3.000 A/B 1.32 6.217 0.000**

individual needs of students (0.84) (0.69)

Notes: ** = Significant at 0.01. Figures in parentheses are standard deviations

Tangibility (1 3), Reliability (4-6), Responsiveness (7-9), Assurance (10-16), Empathy (17 -22).

Table 2: Mean Difference between Importance-Performance of Service Attributes

Statements Overall Service Quality Overall Satisfaction

(Percent) (Percent)
Very Low - -
Low 18.2 13.6
Neither Low nor High 54.6 63.6
High 27.3 18.2
Very High - 4.6
Total 100 100
Mean 3.09 3.14
Table 3: Students` Evaluation of Overall Service Quality and Satisfaction

Figure 1: Mean Data Plotting of the Importance and Performance Scores with
Horizontal and Vertical Gridlines for Business Students

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