Pervasiveness of SERVQUAL and its potential for the standards for functional quality of service

This study examines how pervasive the applications of SERVQUAL are in the service industries and explores if SERVQUAL items can be used to derive standards for service quality. SERVQUAL has been used to measure service quality in a wide variety of service industries in many different countries. However, there is a limited effort to examine how pervasively SERVQUAL has been utilised since its inception in 1988. This study collected data on the applications of SERVQUAL from ABI/INFORM Complete and found that SERVQUAL has been extensively utilised for measuring service quality. Researchers have also criticised SERVQUAL due to its use of the gap approach to assess service quality. Nonetheless, SERVQUAL items contain service measures, which, when stripped of the expressions of expectation and perception, can provide standards for service quality. This study identified the functional standards quality of service and proposed a theoretical model for measuring the functional fitness of service.