Measuring Quality of Services

Hana Šuster Erjavec

Hana Šuster Erjavec

Keywords: quality of services, latent variable, manifest variables, conceptualization, operationalization

Abstract

Dilemmas on how to conceptualize and operationalize quality of services are common in the literature. Our approach is inspired by the most advanced and promising scientific approaches to the conceptualization and operationalization of constructs. The implications of the focus groups showed how Slovenian consumers perceive quality of services. The empirical study on a sample of 1154 Slovenian consumers of three different types of services confirmed our operationalization of service quality that includes the experience of service quality on the whole, a comparison of how much the quality of services meets the actual expectations of service customers, and a comparison with the competition. This is an important methodological contributi- on to measuring service quality. Reliability of measuring all three variables is exem- plary in all three types of services; in addition, we confirmed the convergent validi- ty of the measurement.

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Author Biography

Hana Šuster Erjavec

Faculty of Commercial and Business Sciences, Slovenia
E-mail: hana.erjavec@fkpv.si

Hana Šuster Erjavec graduated from the Faculty of Economics and Business in Maribor and earned her MSc. and Ph.D. in marketing at the Faculty of Economics Ljubljana. She is currently employed at the Faculty of Commercial and Business Sciences. She combines topical theoretical knowledge with her professional expe- riences in the industry. Her bibliography includes 124 published works. She is a member of the program committee of the international scientific conference “Knowledge and business challenges of globalization” as well as a reviewer for articles in the marketing field.

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