service quality research report

The Influence of Service Quality on Customer Retention: A Systematic Review in the Higher Education

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• First Online: 20 September 2020
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• Aisha Alshamsi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9354-188X 19 ,
• Muhammad Alshurideh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7336-381X 19 , 20 ,
• Barween Al Kurdi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0825-4617 21 &
• Said A. Salloum   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6073-3981 22  

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1261))

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• International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Systems and Informatics

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This paper aims to identify the influence of service quality on customer retention and the factors that affect this relationship using a systematic review and meta-analysis method to use in the second stage in examining the relationship of service quality on customer retention in higher educations. A systematic review method was conducted to select the studies that will assist in the current studies. This systematic review covered 32 research articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 1996 till 2018 and were reviews critically. The main findings of the study indicate that service quality-related factors is the most common factor, flowed by customer satisfaction, trust, commitment, and loyalty. Moreover, it has been noticed that the quantitative method using questionnaire was found to be the primary relied upon research methods for collecting data followed by a focus group. Furthermore, 75% of the analyzed studies recorded positive research outcomes. Most of the analyzed studies that had a positive outcome were conducted in the United Kingdom followed by the United States in terms of the context, most of the analyzed studies where done for Banks, followed by Mobile Service Industry, Retailing industry, Small firms, Steel industry, Tourism industry, Airline industry, Zoo, and Advertising service respectively. To that end, this systematic review attempts to investigate the relationship between service quality and customer retention and the factors affecting this relationship.

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Alshamsi, A., Alshurideh, M., Kurdi, B.A., Salloum, S.A. (2021). The Influence of Service Quality on Customer Retention: A Systematic Review in the Higher Education. In: Hassanien, A.E., Slowik, A., Snášel, V., El-Deeb, H., Tolba, F.M. (eds) Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Systems and Informatics 2020. AISI 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1261. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58669-0_37

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Service quality and customer satisfaction in the post pandemic world: a study of saudi auto care industry.

• 1 College of Business Administration, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Khobar, Saudi Arabia
• 2 Department of Management Sciences, University of Baluchistan, Quetta, Pakistan

The aim of this research is to examine the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction in the post pandemic world in auto care industry. The car care vendor in the study made effective use of social media to provide responsive updates to the customers in the post pandemic world; such use of social media provides bases for service quality and customer satisfaction. The study examined the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction using the SERVQUAL framework. According to the findings, empathy, reliability, assurance, responsiveness, and tangibles have a significant positive relationship with customer satisfaction. Our findings suggest that it is critical for workshops to recognize the service quality factors that contribute to customer satisfaction. Findings also suggest that empathy, assurance, reliability, responsiveness, and tangibles contribute to customer satisfaction. Auto repair industry must regularly provide personal attention, greet customers in a friendly manner, deliver cars after services, notify customers when additional repairs are required, and take the time to clarify problems to customers. Furthermore, workshops must screen and hire courteous staff who can clearly communicate the services required to customers both in-person and online and effectively communicate the risks associated with repairs. Service quality seems to be aided by prompt services.

Introduction

The previous studies on the effect of pandemic have focused on the behavior related to preventative measures to protect the health of the customers; however, less attention has been paid to the influence of pandemic on customer outcomes. To fill this gap, the SERVQUAL framework was employed to examine the changes in customers’ social media behaviors that have occurred since the pandemic was declared ( Mason et al., 2021 ). In the post pandemic world, the parameters for customer satisfaction have changed considerably ( Monmousseau et al., 2020 ; Srivastava and Kumar, 2021 ; Wu et al., 2021 ). Pandemic has made personal interaction more challenging ( Brown, 2020 ). To be less vulnerable to becoming severely ill with the virus, customers prefer touchless digital mediums of communications. For example, Mason et al. (2021) concluded that pandemic has altered customers’ needs, shopping and purchasing behaviors, and post purchase satisfaction levels. Keeping in view the public healthcare concerns, the governmental pandemic mitigation policies also promotes touchless mediums for shopping; therefore, the role of social media as a communication tool stands to increase at a time when social distancing is a common practice; social media provides avenues for buyers to interact with sellers without physical contact. Thus, the use of social media gains critical importance, especially after the pandemic ( Mason et al., 2021 ), and the businesses may find new opportunities to gain competitive advantage through their use of effective social media strategies.

The car care industry uses traditional means of customer communications. The company in this study made use of social media in improving their service quality through effective and safe communication with their customers. The use of social media to provide updates to customers played a significant role in improving service quality and satisfaction ( Ramanathan et al., 2017 ). The company in the study used Snapchat to provide updates on the work, thus minimizing the customers’ need to physically visit the car care facility. This use of social media gave a significant boost to the responsiveness aspect of the service quality.

Service quality and customer satisfaction are important aspects of business since a company’s growth is largely dependent on how well it maintains its customers through service and how well they keep their customers satisfied ( Edward and Sahadev, 2011 ). According to Chang et al. (2017) ; customer satisfaction is expected to result from good service efficiency, which will improve customer engagement and interrelationship. González et al. (2007) asserted that customer satisfaction is linked to high service quality, which makes businesses more competitive in the marketplace. This study uses the SERVQUAL framework to define service quality. This framework uses five dimensions to account for service quality, namely, tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Identifying issues in service and customer satisfaction can lead to high service quality. Furthermore, service quality can be characterized by analyzing the variations between planned and perceived service. Service quality and customer satisfaction have a positive relationship.

Recognizing and meeting customer expectations through high levels of service quality help distinguish the company’s services from those of its rivals ( Dominic et al., 2010 ). Social media plays a critical role in shaping these service quality-related variables. Specifically, in the context coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), where customers hesitated to visit auto workshops physically, the importance of online platforms such as auto workshops’ social media pages on Instagram and Facebook has increased, where customers try to get information and book appointment. For example, responsiveness is not only physical responsiveness but also digital means of communication. The car care company in this study uses social media as mode of communication with their customers due to physical interaction restriction caused by the pandemic.

Service quality becomes a critical element of success in car care industry because customer contact is one of the most important business processes ( Lambert, 2010 ). Saudi Arabia is one of the Middle East’s largest new vehicle sales and auto part markets. Saudi Arabia’s car repair industry has grown to be a significant market for automakers from all over the world. As a result, the aim of this research was to see how service quality affects customer satisfaction in the Saudi auto repair industry.

This aim of this research was to answer the following research questions:

(i) What is the contribution of individual dimensions of SERVQUAL on customer perceived service quality of car care industry in Saudi Arabia?

(ii) What is the impact of perceived service quality on customer satisfaction in car care industry in Saudi Arabia?

Literature Review

The concept of service has been defined since the 1980s by Churchill and Surprenant (1982) together with Asubonteng et al. (1996) , who popularized the customer satisfaction theory through measuring the firm’s actual service delivery in conformity with the expectations of customers, as defined by the attainment of perceived quality, and that is meeting the customers’ wants and needs beyond their aspirations. With this premise, Armstrong et al. (1997) later expanded the concept of service into the five dimensions of service quality that comprised tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy.

Extant literature on service delivery focuses on the traditional emphasis on the contact between the customer and service provider ( Mechinda and Patterson, 2011 ; Han et al., 2021 ). Doucet (2004) explained that the quality in these traditional settings depends on the design of the location and the behavior of the service provider. More recently, the proliferation of the internet has led to the emergence of the online service centers. In these cases, communication both in-person and online plays a critical role in the quality of service rendered. It follows that service quality in hybrid settings depends on quality of communications on social media as well as the behavioral interactions between the customer and the service provider ( Doucet, 2004 ; Palese and Usai, 2018 ). These factors require subjective assessments by the concerned parties, which means that different persons will have varied assessments of the quality of service received.

SERVQUAL Dimensions

Service quality has been described with the help of five quality dimensions, namely, tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Definitions relating to these variables have been modified by different authors. The relationship between various dimensions of service quality differs based on particular services.

The tangible aspects of a service have a significant influence on perception of service quality. These comprise the external aspects of a service that influence external customer satisfaction. The key aspects of tangibility include price, ranking relative to competitors, marketing communication and actualization, and word-of-mouth effects ( Ismagilova et al., 2019 ), which enhance the perception of service quality of customers ( Santos, 2002 ). These aspects extend beyond SERVQUAL’s definition of quality within the car care industry settings. Thus, we proposed the following hypothesis:

Hypotheses 1a: Tangibles are positively related with perceived service quality.

Reliability

Reliability is attributed to accountability and quality. There are a bunch of precursors that likewise aid basic methodology for shaping clients’ perspectives toward administration quality and reliability in the car care industry in Saudi ( Korda and Snoj, 2010 ; Omar et al., 2015 ). A portion of these predecessors is identified with car repair benefits and includes the convenient accessibility of assets, specialist’s expertise level and productive issue determination, correspondence quality, client care quality, an exhibition of information, client esteem, proficiency of staff, representatives’ capacity to tune in to client inquiries and respond emphatically to their necessities and protests, security, workers’ dependability, more limited holding up time and quickness, actual prompts, cost of administration, accessibility of issue recuperation frameworks, responsibility, guarantees, for example, mistake-free administrations, generally association’s picture and workers’ politeness, and responsiveness. Despite the innovative changes happening in the car care industry and the instructive degree of car administrations suppliers in Saudi Arabia, car care suppliers in the territory are taught about the need to continually refresh their insight into the advancements in the area of vehicle workshops and the components of administration. Thus, we argued that reliability is important to enhance the perception of service quality of customers.

Hypotheses 1b: Reliability is positively linked with perceived service quality.

Responsiveness

Responsiveness refers to the institution’s ability to provide fast and good quality service in the period. It requires minimizing the waiting duration for all interactions between the customer and the service provider ( Nambisan et al., 2016 ). Nambisan et al. (2016) explained that responsiveness is crucial for enhancing the customers’ perception of service quality. Rather, the institution should provide a fast and professional response as to the failure and recommend alternative actions to address the customer’s needs ( Lee et al., 2000 ). In this light, Nambisan summarizes responsiveness to mean four key actions, i.e., giving individual attention to customers, providing prompt service, active willingness to help guests, and employee availability when required. These aspects help companies to enhance the customers’ perception of service quality. Therefore, we proposed the following hypothesis:

Hypotheses 1c: Responsiveness is positively linked with perceived service quality.

Assurance refers to the skills and competencies used in delivering services to the customers. Wu et al. (2015) explains that employee skills and competencies help to inspire trust and confidence in the customer, which in turn stirs feelings of safety and comfort in the process of service delivery. Customers are more likely to make return visits if they feel confident of the employees’ ability to discharge their tasks. Elmadağ et al. (2008) lists the factors that inspire empathy as competence, politeness, positive attitude, and effective communication as the most important factors in assuring customers. Besides, other factors include operational security of the premises as well as the proven quality of the service provided to the customers. Thus, the assurance has significant contribution in the perception of service quality.

Hypotheses 1d: Assurance is positively related with perceived service quality.

Empathy refers to the quality of individualized attention given to the customers. The service providers go an extra mile to make the customer feel special and valued during the interaction ( Bahadur et al., 2018 ). Murray et al. (2019) explains that empathy requires visualizing the needs of the customer by assuming their position. Murray et al. (2019) lists the qualities that foster empathy as including courtesy and friendliness of staff, understanding the specific needs of the client, giving the client special attention, and taking time to explain the practices and procedure to be undertaken in the service delivery process. Therefore, we proposed the following hypothesis:

Hypotheses 1e: Empathy is positively related with perceived service quality.

Perceived Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction refers to the level of fulfillment expressed by the customer after the service delivery process. This is a subjective assessment of the service based on the five dimensions of service quality. Customer satisfaction is important due to its direct impact on customer retention ( Hansemark and Albinsson, 2004 ; Cao et al., 2018 ; Zhou et al., 2019 ), level of spending ( Fornell et al., 2010 ), and long-term competitiveness of the organization ( Suchánek and Králová, 2019 ). Susskind et al. (2003) describes that service quality has a direct impact on customer satisfaction. For this reason, this research considers that five dimensions of service quality are the important antecedents of customer satisfaction.

Service quality refers to the ability of the service to address the needs of the customers ( Atef, 2011 ). Customers have their own perception of quality before interacting with the organization. The expectancy-confirmation paradigm holds that customers compare their perception with the actual experience to determine their level of satisfaction from the interaction ( Teas, 1993 ). These assessments are based on the five independent factors that influence quality. Consequently, this research considers service quality as an independent variable.

This study attempts to quantify perceived service quality though SERVQUAL dimensions. We proposed that customers place a high premium on service quality as a critical determinant of satisfaction. Moreover, it is argued that satisfaction prompts joy and reliability among customers in Saudi Arabia. These discoveries infer that the perception of service quality is significantly related to satisfaction, and quality insight can be applied across different cultures with negligible contrasts in the result. Car care industry in Saudi Arabia has grave quality problems. To rectify this situation, it is essential to apply quality systems as tools for development. The SERVQUAL is one of these system options. It is used to gauge the service quality using five dimensions that have been time-tested since 1982. Thus, the significance of SERVQUAL in car care industry in Saudi Arabia cannot be overemphasized. The study further suggests that the SERVRQUAL dimension increases the perceived service quality, which in turn increases customer satisfaction. Thus, we proposed the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: The perceived service quality of car care customers is positively linked with their satisfaction.

Methods and Procedures

In this study, we employed a cross-sectional research design. Using a paper-pencil survey, data were collected form auto care workshops situated in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. According to the study by Newsted et al. (1998) , the survey method is valuable for assessing opinions and trends by collecting quantitative data. We adapted survey instruments from previous studies. The final survey was presented to a focus group of two Ph.D. marketing scholars who specialized in survey design marketing research. The survey was modified keeping in view the recommendations suggested by focus group members. We contacted the customers who used social media to check the updates and book the appointment for their vehicle’s service and maintenance. We abstained 130 surveys, 13 of which were excluded due to missing information. Therefore, the final sample encompassed 117 (26 female and 91 male) participants across multiple age groups: 10 aged less than 25 years, 46 aged between 26 and 30 years, 28 aged between 31 and 35 years, 21 aged between 36 and 40 years, and 12 aged older than 40 years (for details, refer to Table 1 ). Similarly, the averaged participants were graduates with more than 3 years of auto care service experience.

Table 1. Demographic information.

We measured service quality dimensions using 20 indicators. Customer satisfaction of the restaurant customers was assessed using 4-item scale (for detail, refer to Table 2 ). In this research, the 5-point Likert scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree was used.

Table 2. Constructs and items included in the questionnaire.

Control Variables

Following the previous research, customer’s gender and age were controlled to examine the influence of service quality dimensions on customer satisfaction.

Data Analysis and Results

For data analysis and hypotheses testing, we employed the structural equation modeling (SEM) based on the partial least squares (PLS) in Smart-PLS. Smart-PLS 3 is a powerful tool, which is used for the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and SEM ( Nachtigall et al., 2003 ). Research suggests that CFA is the best approach to examine the reliability and validity of the constructs. We employed SEM for hypotheses testing because it is a multivariate data analysis technique, which is commonly used in the social sciences ( González et al., 2008 ).

Common Method Bias

To ensure that common method bias (CMB) is not a serious concern for our results, we employed procedural and statistical and procedural remedies. During data collection, each survey in the research contained a covering letter explaining the purpose of the study and guaranteed the full anonymity of the participants. Moreover, it was mentioned in the cover letter that there was no right and wrong questions, and respondents’ answers would neither be related to their personalities nor disclosed to anyone. According to Podsakoff et al. (2003) , the confidentiality of the responses can assist to minimize the possibility of CMB. Furthermore, CMB was verified through the Harman’s single-factor test ( Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). All items in this research framework were categorized into six factors, among which the first factor explained 19.01% of the variance. Thus, our results showed that CMB was not an issue in our research. Moreover, using both tolerance value and the variance inflation factors (VIFs), we assessed the level of multicollinearity among the independent variables. Our results indicate that the tolerance values for all dimensions of service quality were above the recommended threshold point of 0.10 ( Cohen et al., 2003 ), and VIF scores were between 1.4 and 1.8, which suggested the absence of multicollinearity; thus, it is not a serious issue for this study.

Measurement Model

We performed CFA to analyze the reliability and validity of the constructs. The measurement model was assessed by examining the content, convergent, and discriminant validities. To assess the content validity, we reviewed the relevant literature and pilot test the survey. We used item loadings, Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (CR), and the average variance extracted (AVE) ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981b ) to assess the convergent validity. The findings of CFA illustrate that all item loadings are greater than 0.70. The acceptable threshold levels for all values were met, as the value of Cronbach’s alpha and CR was greater than 0.70 for all constructs ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981b ), and the AVE for all variables was above 0.50 ( Tabachnick and Fidell, 2007 ; see Table 3 ). Thus, these findings show acceptable convergent validity.

Table 3. Item loadings, Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, and average variance extracted.

To analyze the discriminant validity, we evaluated the discriminant validity by matching the association between correlation among variables and the square root of the AVE of the variables ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981a ). The results demonstrate that the square roots of AVE are above the correlation among constructs, hence showing a satisfactory discriminant validity, therefore, indicating an acceptable discriminant validity. Moreover, descriptive statistics and correlations are provided in Table 4 .

Table 4. Descriptive statistics and correlations.

Structural Model and Hypotheses Testing

After establishing the acceptable reliability and validity in the measurement model, we examined the relationship among variables and analyzed the hypotheses based on the examination of standardized paths. The path significance of proposed relations were calculated using the SEM through the bootstrap resampling technique ( Henseler et al., 2009 ), with 2,000 iterations of resampling. The proposed research framework contains five dimensions of service quality (i.e., tangibles of the auto care, reliability of the auto care, responsiveness of the auto care, assurance of the auto care, and empathy of the auto care) and customer satisfaction of auto care. The results show that five dimensions of service quality are significantly related to customer’s perception of service quality of auto care; thus, hypotheses 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, and 1e were supported. Figure 1 shows that the service quality of auto care is a significant determinant of customer satisfaction of auto care industry (β = 0.85, p < 0.001), supporting hypothesis 2. The result in Figure 1 also shows that 73.8% of the variation exists in customer satisfaction of auto care.

Figure 1. Results of the research model tests. *** p < 0.001.

The main purpose of this research was to assess the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction in the post pandemic world in Saudi Arabia. This study was designed to examine how satisfaction of auto care customers is influenced by service quality, especially, when pandemic was declared, and due to health concerns, the customers were reluctant to visit workshops physically ( Mason et al., 2021 ). It appears that after the pandemic, customers were increasingly using online platforms for purchasing goods and services. This study reveals how customers of auto repair in Saudi perceive service quality and see how applicable SERVQUAL model across with five dimensions, including tangibles, responsiveness, reliability, assurance, and empathy measure service quality. The findings of this research show that five dimensions of SERVQUAL are positively related to the service quality perception of auto care customers in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, service quality perceptions are positively linked with customer satisfaction. These results indicate that auto care customers view service quality as an important antecedent of their satisfaction. The findings indicate that the customers perceive the service quality as a basic service expectation and will not bear the extra cost for this criterion. In this research, the positive connection between service quality and customer satisfaction is also consistent with previous studies (e.g., González et al., 2007 ; Gallarza-Granizo et al., 2020 ; Cai et al., 2021 ). Thus, service quality plays a key role in satisfying customers. These findings suggest that service organizations, like auto repair industry in Saudi Arabia could enhance satisfaction of their customers through improving service quality. Because of pandemic, people are reluctant to visit auto care workshops, and they try to book appointment through social media; so, by improving the quality of management of their social media pages, the workshops can provide accurate information for monitoring, maintaining, and improving service quality ( Sofyani et al., 2020 ). More specifically, social media, which allows individuals to interact remotely, appears to be gaining significant importance as a tool for identifying customers’ products and service needs. Increasingly, customers are also increasingly engaging with retailers through social media to search and shop for product and services options, evaluate the alternatives, and make purchases.

Furthermore, the research on the customer service quality can be held essential since it acts as a means for the promotion of the competitiveness of an organization. Precisely, the knowledge about the customers’ view concerning service quality can be used by organizations as a tool to improve their customer services. For example, knowledge of the required customer service would help in the facilitation of training programs oriented toward the enlightenment of the overall employees on the practices to improve and offer high-quality customer services. Besides, information concerning customer services would be essential in decision-making process concerning the marketing campaigns of the firm, hence generating competitive advantage of the organization in the marketplace. Findings show that customers demand more from auto repair, so the company must work hard to increase all service quality dimensions to improve customer satisfaction. Thus, organizations ought to venture in customer services initiatives to harness high-quality services.

Managerial Implications

The findings of this research indicate a strong association between SERVQUAL dimensions and perceived service quality. Perception of higher service quality leads to higher level of customer satisfaction among Saudi car care customers. In particular, the results indicate high scores for reliability, empathy, tangibles, and responsiveness. These are clear indications that the immense budgetary allocation has enabled these institutions to develop capacity. Nevertheless, the lack of a strong human resource base remains a key challenge in the car care industry. The effective use of social media plays a critical role in the responsiveness dimension of service quality. Companies need to develop their digital and social media marketing strategies in the post pandemic world to better satisfy their customers.

Saudi Arabia requires a large and well-trained human resource base. This requires intensive investment in training and development. Most of these workers have a limited contract, which reduced their focus on long-term dedication. Consequently, the government should provide longer-term contracts for workers in this critical sector. The contracts should include training on tailored courses to serve the identified needs in effective communication with the customers using digital media. We suggested that the auto car care workshops should provide training to their workers, particularly, on service technicians to enhance their skills that will help to deliver fast and reliable service to their auto customers.

Moreover, the auto car care workshops also provide customer care- or customer handling-related training especially for the service marketing personnel who handles customer directly for them to better understand the customer needs and expectations. This can be done at least once a year. This will help auto care workshops to improve their service quality.

Limitation and Future Research Direction

This research is not without limitations. First, the findings of this study are based on data collected from a single source and at a single point of time, which might be subjected to CMB ( Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). Future research can collect data from different points of time to validate the findings of this research. Second, this research was carried out with data obtained from Saudi auto car care customers; the findings of this research might be different because the research framework was retested in a different cultural context. Therefore, more research is needed to improve the understanding of the principles of service quality and customer satisfaction, as well as how they are evaluated, since these concepts are critical for service organizations’ sustainability and development. A greater sample size should be used in a similar study so that the findings could be applied to a larger population. Research on the effect of inadequate customer service on customer satisfaction, the impact of customer retention strategies on customer satisfaction levels, and the impact of regulatory policies on customer satisfaction is also recommended. Third, because most of the participants participated in this research are men, future studies should obtain data from female participants and provide more insights into the difference between male and female customers’ satisfaction levels. Moreover, due to limitation of time, the sample was collected from the eastern province. Consequently, further research should include a larger and more representative sample of the Saudi population. Because of the non-probability sampling approach used in this research, the results obtained cannot be generalized to a wide range of similar auto repair services situations, even though the methodology used in this study could be extended to these similar situations. Since the sample size considered is not that large, expectations could vary significantly. When compared with the significance of conducting this form of analysis, the limitations mentioned above are minor. Such research should be conducted on a regular basis to track service quality and customer satisfaction levels and, as a result, make appropriate changes to correct any vulnerability that may exist.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Ethics Statement

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

SZ helped in designing the study. ZH helped in designing and writing the manuscript. MAA helped in data collection and analysis and writing the manuscript. SUR repositioned and fine-tuned the manuscript, wrote the introduction, and provided feedback on the manuscript.

This study was received funding from University Research Fund.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords : auto care, customer satisfaction, service quality, Saudi Arabia, pandemic (COVID-19)

Citation: Zygiaris S, Hameed Z, Ayidh Alsubaie M and Ur Rehman S (2022) Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction in the Post Pandemic World: A Study of Saudi Auto Care Industry. Front. Psychol. 13:842141. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.842141

Received: 23 December 2021; Accepted: 07 February 2022; Published: 11 March 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Zygiaris, Hameed, Ayidh Alsubaie and Ur Rehman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Zahid Hameed, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Service research: past, present and future research agenda

Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC

ISSN : 2444-9695

Article publication date: 17 May 2022

Issue publication date: 8 September 2022

This study aims to explore past and present service research and to provide a future research agenda for service researchers by presenting a big picture of the intellectual connections and emerging topics in the discipline.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is an empirical analysis of citations and cocitations on a sample of 5,837 articles published in leading service journals (from 1981 to December 2020). Network analysis was adopted to analyze the data. This study is exclusive in conducting the inquiry at the individual publication level, rather than using the normal aggregated author co-citation analysis approach.

The findings reveal that the main themes of service research centered on customer satisfaction, service quality, service-dominant logic, methodological foundations, market orientation and service encounter. Also clarified is the periphery domain that may become more important in the future (i.e. technology). The findings also present anchor points for conceptual framing and conceptual development – five main themes that are momentous to navigate theory discovery and justification in the knowledge domain.

Research limitations/implications

It calls for a more academic effort to evaluate the service research by considering different epistemological paradigms, such as positivism, monologic and hermeneutic, to better understand the process and progress of the discipline.

Practical implications

Through exploring the transformation of service research into a customer-centric model and technology-based service logic, this study offers possible implications for practitioners and further research areas for service researchers.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to use a citation, cocitation and network analysis to examine service research published in leading service journals. This study provides a significant contribution to the theory by combining main conceptual areas and interests in the given discipline.

Este estudio explora la investigación de servicios pasada y presente y proporciona una agenda de investigación, presentando un panorama general de las conexiones intelectuales y los temas emergentes en la disciplina.

Metodología

Este estudio es un análisis empírico de las citas y co-citas sobre una muestra de 5.837 artículos publicados en las principales revistas de servicios (1981–2020). Se utilizó el análisis de redes para examinar los datos. Este trabajo es único en la realización de la investigación a nivel de publicación individual, en lugar de utilizar el enfoque habitual de análisis de co-citación de autores agregados.

Conclusiones

Los resultados revelan que los temas principales de la investigación sobre servicios se centran en la satisfacción del cliente, la calidad del servicio, la lógica del servicio dominante, los fundamentos metodológicos, la orientación al mercado y el encuentro de servicios. También se clarifica un ámbito periférico que puede adquirir mayor importancia en el futuro (la tecnología). Los resultados también presentan puntos de anclaje para el encuadre y el desarrollo conceptual de diversos temas importantes.

Originalidad

Este estudio es el primero que utiliza un análisis de citas, co-citas y redes para analizar la investigación en servicios publicada en las principales revistas de servicios. Proporciona una importante contribución a la teoría al combinar las principales áreas conceptuales y los intereses de la disciplina.

Implicaciones prácticas

Mediante la exploración de la transformación de la investigación en servicios en un modelo centrado en el cliente y en la lógica de los servicios basados en la tecnología, este estudio ofrece posibles implicaciones para los profesionales y nuevas áreas de investigación para los investigadores.

Implicaciones

Se reclama un mayor esfuerzo académico para evaluar la investigación de servicios considerando diferentes paradigmas epistemológicos, como el positivismo, el monologismo y la hermenéutica, para comprender mejor el proceso y el progreso de la disciplina.

本研究旨在探索过去和现在的服务研究, 并通过展示该学科的知识联系和新兴主题的全局, 为服务研究领域的学者提供未来的研究议程。

本文是基于1981年到2020年12月期间发表在五个领先服务类期刊上的5,837篇文章进行引用和共同引用的实证分析, 并采用网络分析法对数据进行分析和分类。这项研究的独到之处在于在单个出版物层面上进行调查, 而不是采用正常的汇总作者共被引分析方法。

我们的调查结果显示, 服务研究的主题主要集中在顾客满意度、服务质量、服务主导逻辑、方法论基础、市场导向和服务遭遇。同时, 还阐明了未来可能变得更加重要的外围领域（即技术）。研究结果还提出了概念框架和概念发展的锚点–概念图的五个主要主题对导航知识领域的理论发现和论证至关重要。

本研究首次使用引文、共同引文和网络分析来考察发表在领先服务期刊上的服务研究。它结合特定学科的主要概念领域和兴趣, 为理论研究做出了重要的贡献。它还确定了我们在服务学术研究中已知和未知的内容。

通过探索服务研究转变为以客户为中心的模式和基于技术的服务逻辑, 本研究为从业者提供了启示, 也为后续服务研究指引了值得进一步研究的领域。

本文呼吁更多的学术研究通过考虑不同的认识论范式, 例如实证主义、一元论和解释学来评估服务研究, 以便更好地了解该学科的过程和进展。本文还呼吁未来研究可以尝试填补本文研究结果提出的知识空白。

• Service research
• Bibliometric analysis
• Citation analysis
• Co-citation analysis
• Intellectual structure
• Future agenda
• Investigación en servicios
• Análisis bibliométrico
• Análisis de citas
• Análisis de co-citas
• Estructura intelectual
• Agenda de investigación

Arici, H.E. , Köseoglu, M.A. and Altinay, L. (2022), "Service research: past, present and future research agenda", Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC , Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 146-167. https://doi.org/10.1108/SJME-09-2021-0177

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Hasan Evrim Arici, Mehmet Ali Köseoglu and Levent Altinay.

Published in Spanish Journal of Marketing – ESIC . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

How does scientific service research evolve? To unearth this black box, we need to address another question: “what is the origin of academic service research?” The origin aids to form the intellectual links and consequently the structure of the scientific field ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). Visualization of the intellectual relations contributes to proposing and developing novel and current approaches. Revealing potential structures and solving existing questions could offer knowledge and possible remedies for industry professionals ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). In addition, scientific domains have used identifiable intellectual connections that form further directions. Service research demonstrated a proof of evolution, starting with the discussion of services marketing as a separate field from product marketing and its definition as a unique scientific domain ( Lovelock and Patterson, 2015 ; Parasuraman et al. , 1985 ; Shostack, 1977 ). An academic understanding of this progress could be significant for scholars, who try to clarify the prospective influences of theory on the industry. Revealing interconnections among various service industries could also provide a meaningful contribution to practitioners about past, present and future trends in the service context.

Scholars have conducted empirical studies of evolution by focusing on specific service sectors, including hospitality ( Arici et al. , 2021 ), education ( Tight, 2008 ), health care ( Rigby, 2014 ) and marketing ( Sheoran et al. , 2018 ). However, these investigations have not provided a comprehensive view of the evolving patterns of the service literature. Therefore, there is a need for research that clarifies the origins, progress and topics of the scientific service references in an examination for intellectual connections, also known as intellectual structure, cocitation networks, invisible colleges, knowledge networks, knowledge domains or source knowledge that is a depiction of a discipline’s theme-based features from its roots to its roof ( Köseoglu, 2020 ).

The specific reasons for such an empirical work are threefold. The first and foremost reason is the maturity level of the service research literature. Recent academic debate has also escorted the development of service research. It is noteworthy that there is a current discussion on service delivery design in service industries. Integration of new-generation technologies, for instance, has adopted philosophical viewpoints from determinism and instrumentalism to define technology as autonomous and humanly controlled as a response to the traditional design of service context. This alternative view has also been triggered by academic efforts, particularly after the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Developing a novel approach requires realizing what the origin tells us. Therefore, examining the scientific root of complete service research deserves scholarly attention, different from performing tantamount research within a specific discipline, like hospitality. Even though service literature has a thriving background, past investigations have provided scarce longitudinal scope that leads to producing an inadequate understanding of the progress of the scholarly domain over the longer run. The other reason for such empirical work is because of the restrictions of previously conducted bibliometric analyses in the service literature. Previous investigations neither conceived intellectual connections between appearing studies or subdomains nor the transformative effect of influential studies across the complete service research domain ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). Third, recent bibliometric studies have merely focused on analyzing a historical evolution of a single journal ( Donthu et al. , 2020 ; Tur-Porcar et al. , 2018 ). Moreover, several scholars have considered it a unique sector and a territory ( Rigby, 2014 ). These attempts have of course provided a meaningful contribution to the knowledge, but they fault revealing a complete big picture of service literature because a greater wide bibliometric research could potentially create more generic outcomes.

Last, past investigations have generally included not only journal articles as a way of a credible sources but they also used books, book chapters, conference papers, dissertations and research notes to expand their citation and co-citation analysis. Despite its limited advantages, this method can create problematic empirical results ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). To illustrate, conference papers might be not submitted to a rigorous review process that leads to a question regarding their presented findings, if they are contrasted with academic journal articles.

to define influential fields of source knowledge in service literature by mapping the intellectual connections;

to decide on main connections and clusters within the knowledge domain; and

to display appearing study fields as a possible agenda for further research.

The contribution of this present research to the service literature is threefold. One is a contribution to the theory development in service research. This is achieved through the establishment of intellectual structure across a large body of investigation. Second, this present research includes a larger number of service journal articles over a longer time horizon than its counterparts. This may enable service scholars to gain a wider insight into the domain and its progress over an extended period. In particular, the results could illustrate what we know to extend our current knowledge of service scholarship and what we do not know to reveal the knowledge gap within the domain. Finally, because using academic journal articles could provide more reliable outputs in a bibliometric study ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ), this paper merely includes journal articles in the analysis. In doing so, this study has a great potential to produce evidence-based results and future directions from reliable data sources.

2. Intellectual structure of service research

Several scholars have conducted review analysis in the service literature. These studies could be categorized into three clusters. The first cluster includes service-focused investigations ( Arici and Uysal, 2022 ; Benoit et al. , 2017 ; Cronin, 2003 ; Gürlek and Koseoglu, 2021 ; Subramony et al. , 2021 ). Using keywords “service” and “employee,” Subramony et al. ’s (2021) study consisted of articles associated with frontline service employees in applied/occupational health psychology and service journals. Benoit et al. (2017) also used limited criteria, including theory, methodology and some descriptive aspects (e.g. number of authors or references).

The second consists of journal-focused studies ( Donthu et al. , 2020 ; Donthu et al. , 2021a , 2021b ; Pilkington and Chai, 2008 ). Pilkington and Chai’s (2008) study revealed core research themes and concepts of the International Journal of Service Industry Management , whereas Donthu et al. ’s (2020) co-citation analysis identifies the Journal of Service Research ’s (JSR) prominent topics and traces the progress of the study themes in the journal. Similarly, other recent bibliometric studies focus on revealing the intellectual structure of a specific journal, instead of a discipline. Donthu et al. ’s (2021a) work examined the source knowledge of the Journal of Services Marketing (JSMAR) and Donthu et al. ’s (2021b) study revealed the themes of the Journal of Service Theory and Practice (JSTP).

The third and last cluster can be named theme-focused ( Gong and Yi, 2021 ; Klaus and Zaichkowsky, 2020 ). Gong and Yi (2021) , for example, focus on only customer citizenship behaviors, whereas Klaus and Zaichkowsky’s (2020) study investigates artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of services marketing. Though these previous attempts have contributed to the service research, they mostly fail to provide a wider view of the intellectual structure of the knowledge domain. Thus, our paper has the potential to make a considerable contribution to the service literature by not only revealing the past and present of the service research but also providing future research agenda for further scientific efforts. Table 1 provides the past review research investigating the intellectual structure or knowledge networks in service research.

3. Methodology

This study adopts citation analysis and co-citation analysis through network analysis to investigate the intellectual structure of service research. These methods enhance the objectivity of findings obtained, with the inclusion of big datasets over a large period. Citation analysis includes clarifying main documents in a knowledge field through computing references. It presents applicable outcomes regarding the past and future of a domain. Subsequently, co-citation analysis investigates associations among the influential articles by visualizing source knowledge in the discipline. These methods help scholars to reveal emergent subdomains and their intrarelationships. Hence, this paper sets out to explore the intellectual connections of service research by using cocitation and network analyses.

3.1 Data collection

The data analyzed consists of references cited by service associated articles, which have been published in scientific journals. These articles were obtained from the five highly prestigious service journals: The Service Industries Journal (TSIJ), Journal of Service Management , JSMAR, JSR and JSTP. In the selection of these journals, we first searched the most well-known international databases (i.e. Social Science Citation Index and Scopus) and decided on five leading service journals. Another reason behind choosing these journals is their higher impact factors than other service journals. In other words, these five journals have published the most cited articles in service research, thus their potential to dominate the knowledge field is higher than their counterparts. To check the applicability of the selected journals, two productive scholars and a service journal editor have also been advised. Through getting their approval, the five journals have been included in the study sample.

We downloaded articles and their reference lists from the Scopus database from the first issue to the latest issue in 2020. Among these five journals, as the first academic service journal in the world TSIJ’s first issue was released in 1981. Our bibliometric analysis thus includes journal articles published from 1981 to December 2020. The data were transformed into an Excel sheet, including a total of 5,837 articles with a reference list. To enhance the reliability of the study findings, we decided to consider only articles from the references and so excluded books, book chapters, conference papers and dissertations. This process resulted in approximately 250,000 journal reference appearances.

3.2 Analysis

In bibliometric analysis, four main methods have appeared (i.e. actor analysis, cluster analysis, multidimensional scale analysis and network analysis), each of which relies on co-citation analysis to reveal the intellectual connections of a knowledge domain ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). Despite its huge importance in the bibliometric literature, co-citation analysis has still suffered from the lack of a widely accepted threshold value ( Hota et al. , 2019 ; Köseoglu, 2020 ). While several scholars use cutoff criteria for the analysis ( Hota et al. , 2019 ), other researchers adopt the trial-error approach, and the rest follow a threshold value that consists of a minimum of 50, 100, or greater studies based on study choice and specialty ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). Drawing on the debate, we decided to use the most cited 100 articles as a threshold value in this study. This leads to 100 articles that were cited at least 96 times for potential examination with 19,628 appearances.

In this paper, we performed network analysis to visualize the scholarly foundations and main themes like clusters through VOSviewer software. This software clarifies clusters by using modularity-based clustering ( Eck et al. , 2010 ). We then adopted the relationship strength approach for purposes of normalization. In the network visualization, circles present nodes and lines depict the links between the nodes. The colors show the clusters to which the nodes belong. The magnitude of the nodes demonstrates the usage frequency of an article as a reference ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ).

4. Findings

4.1 citation analysis in service research.

By using document citation analysis of references of the studies issued in the five service journals, influential studies have been revealed in the service research. This study considers the most cited 30 service research articles. The top ten articles have provided several viewpoints regarding influential studies in the field. In terms of topic, SERVQUAL appears as a leading topic in the first ( Parasuraman et al. , 1988 ), third ( Parasuraman et al. , 1985 ) and fifth most cited articles ( Zeithaml et al. , 1996 ) written by the same research team. Cronin Jr and Taylor’s (1992) study on service quality is another paper among the top ten most cited articles. Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) seminal work suggesting an evolution of marketing dominant logic from firm-centric value creation to customer-centric value creation appears as the most cited fourth article in the service research. Bitner et al. ‘s (1990) pioneering work on service encounters is another of the top ten most cited articles, followed by Morgan and Hunt’s (1994) commitment trust theory. Though it cannot be argued that the findings represent comprehensive knowledge domains in the service research, it can be concluded that SERVQUAL is the leading topic and theoretical framework within the service research, followed by customer-centric models in the service encounter.

In terms of methodology, the most cited study is Fornell and Larcker’s (1981) seminal work on structural equation modeling (SEM). This is followed by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) on the same method (i.e. SEM). Podsakoff et al. ’s (2003) work is another influential methodology-focused paper that appeared as the tenth most cited article in service research. This finding illustrates the dominance of quantitative methods, particularly SEM, in service research.

4.2 Co-citation analysis in service research

Drawing on document co-citation analysis, this study reveals five unique clusters, each presenting a knowledge domain of the service research (see Figure 1 ). Appendix demonstrates the relevant data regarding the unique clusters and their ingredients. To appropriately label each cluster, this study has performed a qualitative examination of citations in clusters.

4.2.1 Customer satisfaction and customer relationship.

Customer satisfaction and customer relationship is the biggest theme (red colored) with the highest volume of ingredients (see Figure 1 ). The suggested label considers two subdomains to identify the foci of studies within the theme. The largest categorizing studies with the highest weightings concentrate on customer satisfaction. An obvious association between service quality and satisfaction has appeared in this cluster. The most influential study is Zeithaml et al. ’s (1996) work that develops a conceptual model of the effect of service quality on particular behaviors that signal if customers are satisfied or dissatisfied with the service provided by a company. Another influential article within this cluster is Oliver’s (1980) pioneering work, which proposes a model expressing customer satisfaction as a function of expectation and expectancy disconfirmation. In line with Zeithaml et al. ’s (1996) model, the author suggested that satisfaction influences customer purchase intentions. Customer defections have also been expressed as a consequence of dissatisfaction in service organizations ( Reichheld and Sasser, 1990 ). The authors addressed that customer defection could tell service organizations what parts of the business must be improved.

Fornell’s (1992) study concentrated on a national level of customer satisfaction barometer. His work revealed that Sweden is the first country to develop a national level satisfaction barometer. This national-level barometer measures quality of the total consumption process as customer satisfaction. Within the same country (i.e. Sweden), the other influential study was conducted by Anderson and Sullivan (1993) to reveal the antecedents and consequences of customer satisfaction. Another influential article confirms that the most influential customer satisfaction studies were conducted in Sweden ( Anderson et al. , 1994 ). The authors investigated the financial outcomes of ensuring customer satisfaction in organizations.

Customer relationship-focused studies constitute a second subdomain in this theme. Morgan and Hunt’s (1994) seminal study is the most influential customer relationship reference. The authors theorized that successful relationship marketing requires relationship commitment and trust. Crosby et al. (1990) developed and examined a relationship quality model, which analyzes the nature, outcomes, and predictors of customer relationship quality. The authors revealed that customer relationship quality, including trust and satisfaction, significantly influences companies’ future sales opportunities.

Other influential references in this cluster have examined the role of trust ( Doney and Cannon, 1997 ; Garbarino and Johnson, 1999 ; Sirdeshmukh et al. , 2002 ) and satisfaction ( Bolton, 1998 ) in the buyer–seller relationship. Doney and Cannon’s (1997) work developed a theoretical model that addresses the importance of the trust in the supplier, salesperson and buyer relationship and found that trust of the supplier firm and trust of the salesperson affect a buyer’s anticipated future interaction with the supplier. Moreover, Garbarino and Johnson (1999) revealed that for the high relational customers, trust and commitment play a mediating role in the relationship of component attitudes and customer future intentions. Sirdeshmukh et al. (2002) also developed a model for comprehending the service providers’ policies and implications that improve or deplete customer trust and the mechanisms that transform customer trust into value and loyalty in relational exchanges. On the other hand, Bolton’s (1998) work revealed that customer satisfaction ratings are positively associated with the duration of the relationship. Overall, influential studies have put a special emphasis on trust to investigate customer relationships.

4.2.2 Service quality and servicescape.

As seen in Figure 1 , the second knowledge domain combined with influential service marketing-focused sources is placed toward the bottom left side of the cluster map (green-colored). The fundamental foci of articles within this theme are associated with service quality and servicescape. Whilst Grönroos’s (1984) article is the first academic attempt to clarify the service quality concept and its marketing practices, Parasuraman et al. ’s (1988) SERVQUAL scale dominates this cluster. Their seminal work evolved the service quality into measurable and utilizable by future researchers. In a similar vein, the same author team conceptualized the service quality concept in their earlier study ( Parasuraman et al. , 1985 ), which is the second most influential article in this cluster. A subsequent influential study by Cronin and Taylor (1992) discussed the current theorizations of service quality phenomenon for purportedly confounding satisfaction and processed to suggest a substitute approach to test the phenomenon, called “a performance-based method.” The researchers demonstrated that the service performance scale excels service quality scale. Moreover, Zeithaml’s (1988) theoretical framework about associations of customer perceptions of service quality, price and value is among the ten most cited studies and empirically supports the interrelationship of these concepts.

The SERVQUAL concept has been theoretically and operationally described based on the gap between customers’ service quality perceptions and expectations. Service quality has widely been considered an active concept and an action of two kinds of prediction: what will and needs to happen ( Boulding et al. , 1993 ). Academic efforts have proceeded to refine, redesign and develop the measurement scale and model of the service quality concept.

The concept of servicescape is the second knowledge domain of this cluster. Bitner and his coauthors significantly contribute to the knowledge field ( Bitner , 1990, 1992 ). As a most influential reference, Bitner’s (1990) work evaluates the service encounter where the customer interacts directly with the service provider. The author synthesizes consumer satisfaction, services marketing and attribution concepts. As the second most influential study, Bitner (1992) suggested a theoretical model for comprehending environment-user associations in service businesses.

Unsurprisingly, this cluster involves several articles that use an operational model, because servicescape is an environment where service delivery processes exist. Amongst the earliest works, Chase’s (1978) seminal study proposes a service model claiming that the less direct customer contact in service delivery, the greater the potential of the system to operate at peak efficiency. Shostack (1984) proposes a service blueprint model that enables a service organization to discover all the issues inherent in generating or designing a service. The same author’s earlier conceptual study provided various market-inspired thoughts on the development of new services marketing approaches and the progress of related services marketing principles ( Shostack, 1977 ). Solomon et al. ’s (1985) pioneering work also develops a model based on the role theory suggesting that a dyadic relationship between service providers and customers is a significant factor affecting customer satisfaction with the service offered. Moreover, Zeithaml et al. ’s (1993) study proposed a conceptual framework suggesting the nature and antecedents of customer expectations.

4.2.3 Service dominant logic: value creation.

The darker blue-colored cluster compounds influential service references that concentrate on service-dominant logic including value creation and is located on the right side of the map (see Figure 1 ). Vargo and Lusch(2004 , 2008 ) are two authors who contributed to the two most influential references in this cluster. Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) service-dominant logic suggested that consumer inclusion in value cocreation is important to the execution of service logic. The authors show evolving of a new dominant logic for services marketing from a good-centered model of exchange. Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) evaluate and discuss the meaning process of value creation and evolution from a good-centric approach to a service-centric approach. They define a shift to personalized customer service that includes the cocreation of value via personalized interactions based on how each customer wishes to interact with the firm. This study emphasizes dialog, access, risk–benefits and transparency as the base of the consumer-company interaction.

Later, Vargo and Lusch (2008) identified the salient issues related to their introductory article for what has become known as the “service-dominant logic of marketing (i.e. Vargo and Lusch, 2004 ) and updated the original foundational premises. Similarly, this knowledge domain includes several studies, which extend and update service-dominant logic to develop knowledge of service exchange and value cocreation. Payne et al. (2008) proposed a model that presents a structure for customer participation and considers customers as the same degree of significance as the business as cocreators of value. Edvardsson et al. ’s (2011) study criticized the service-dominant logic and suggested several concepts from social construction theories, such as social structures, social systems, roles, positions, interactions and reproduction of social structures. Grönroos and Voima (2013) also contribute to the development of service-dominant logic in the service literature. The authors classified the company and customers’ actions (i.e. provider, joint, customer) and their interactions (i.e. direct and indirect), resulting in various forms of value creation and cocreation in the service context. The most prolific authors of this cluster, Vargo and Lusch (2016) , modified service-dominant logic by considering institutions and axioms. The authors evaluate and develop an understanding focusing on the role of institutions and institutional arrangements in systems of value cocreation: service ecosystems.

Because of the customer-focused nature of the service-dominant logic, customer engagement is another influential reference within the knowledge domain. Van Doorn et al. (2010) propose the concept of customer engagement behaviors, which is defined as the customers’ behavioral manifestation toward a brand or company. The authors articulated that companies could execute customer engagement behaviors by taking a more integrative and extensive method. Brodie et al. (2011) also discuss the role of customer engagement in cocreating customer experience and value. This study suggests that customer engagement “reflects a psychological state; occurs within a dynamic, iterative process of service relationships that cocreates value”; plays a central role within a nomological network; is a multidimensional concept; and occurs within a specific set of situational conditions generating differing customer engagement levels” ( Brodie et al. , 2011 , p. 258).

As a changing and growing way, customers interact with companies to create service value, technology also proceeds to gradually become a critical topic in this theme. For instance, Meuter et al. ’s (2000) study examines customer interactions with technology-based self-service delivery options. Bitner et al. ’s (2000) work also examines the transforming nature of service, with a focus on how service logic could be developed by effectively using technology. The authors proposed and analyzed the technology infusion matrix including customization/flexibility of service, effective service recovery and spontaneous delight to customers. To comprehend this technology-based changing landscape in service logic, Ostrom et al. ’s (2015) recent study provided several service research priorities, such as using big data, stimulating service innovation, understanding value creation and leveraging technology to advance service. These studies show that service research inclines to focus more on the usage of technology in customer service.

Two theory development studies have also fallen into this cluster. First, Eisenhardt’s (1989) study, which is amongst the earliest papers in theory development describes the process of theory building from case studies. The second most influential study (i.e. Barney, 1991 ) suggested that service firms need to possess physical, human and financial resources and these resources must be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and unsubstitutable. The reason these two papers have been involved within this cluster could be related to the development of new approaches for the service context. That is, service-dominant logic proposes a shift in service delivery from firm centric to customer centric and scientific efforts have continued to theorize this transformation in service research.

4.2.4 Methodology and market orientation.

As exhibited in Figure 1 , the fourth cluster combines influential methodology and market orientation-related references (noted in yellow). The largest category with the highest weights emphasizes SEM in this cluster ( Anderson and Gerbing, 1988 ; Bagozzi and Yi, 1988 ; Fornell and Larcker, 1981a ). Podsakoff et al. ’s (2003) study is also placed among the most influential articles within the knowledge domain. The authors developed statistical (i.e. Harman’s one-factor analysis) and procedural remedies (i.e. using time-lagged data) to control common method bias. Studies within this domain that possess similar emphasis but a lesser influence consist of the study by Hu and Bentler (1999) on cutoff criteria for fit indexes used to test model fit, Podsakoff and Organ (1986) on self-reports in organizational research, Fornell and Larcker (1981b) on interpretative statistics in SEM, Armstrong and Overton (1977) on nonresponse bias and Baron and Kenny’s (1986) on moderation and mediation analysis in social psychological research.

Two articles within this knowledge domain also emphasize scale development ( Churchill, 1979 ; Gerbing and Anderson, 1988 ). Narver and Slater’s (1990) study also develops a valid measure of market orientation and tests its positive impact on a firm’s financial performance. This cluster endorses that service research mostly benefits from empirical analysis through conducting quantitative research methods.

Market-orientation-related studies constitute a second subdomain within this cluster. Kohli and Jaworski’s (1990) study reviews extant literature and knowledge about market orientation and presents a foundation for further investigation. Similarly, Jaworski and Kohli (1993) examined the antecedents and consequences of market orientation. This study found the significant effect of market orientation on the financial profitability of organizations.

Customer perception of service quality also plays a part in this theme. Schneider and Bowen’s (1985) examination of employee and customer perception of service quality in banks replicated and extended Parkington and Schneider’s (1979) previous work on the associations between employees and customers in service firms. The authors found a significant relationship between employees’ perception of human resources practices and customers’ reactions to the service offered. Finally, Hartline and Ferrell (1996) suggested that to improve customers’ perception of service quality, supervisors need to enhance employees’ self-efficacy and job satisfaction and mitigate their role conflict and ambiguity in the service setting.

4.2.5 Service encounter.

Figure 1 demonstrates that the last theme in light violet color unites articles on service encounters and customer complaints. Of the seven articles, three are related to service encounters, whereas the rest are related to customer complaint behaviors and experiences. The most cited article within the theme belongs to Bitner et al. (1990) . The authors depicted types and classes in service design based on their consequences. Smith et al. (1999) also developed a conceptual model of customer satisfaction with service failure/recovery encounters based on an exchange framework. Using a mixed-design experiment from two service contexts (i.e. restaurants and hotels), the authors revealed that customers choose to receive recovery resources, which match the kind of failure they confront in amounts that are congruent with the weight of the failure appearing. Bitner et al. ’s (1994) study explored the sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in service encounters from the contact employee’s perspective. The authors revealed that customers will be likely to blame the employee for a service failure caused by their misbehaviors.

Customer behavior also plays a significant role in this knowledge domain. Keaveney’s (1995) exploratory study identified approximately 80 critical behaviors of service organizations leading to customers switching services. The authors also classified customers’ reasons for switching services into eight general groups: pricing, inconvenience, core service failure, service encounter failures, response to a service failure, competition, ethical problems and involuntary switching. Tax et al. (1998) also revealed that customers were likely to have favorable responses to encounters in which initial service failures were followed by effective recovery. Interestingly, this study found that a poorly handled complaint hurt trust among current guests just as much as it did among first-time guests.

5. Conclusions, future research agenda and limitations

This study aims to investigate the intellectual structure of service research. This chapter emphasizes the theoretical contributions of this current work for the five revealed clusters and provides directions for further investigations. A preliminary and important characteristic of the highly cited documents in service research is the predominance of SERVQUAL over other concepts and approaches. This paper contributes to academic debates regarding popular service marketing theories. SERVQUAL is revealed as the most extensively accepted theory. The predominance of this theory citation demonstrates the vitality of quality as a service research theme. A comparative study examining whether SERVQUAL is a prevalent concept in all service industries would pay dividends.

Second, this present work contributes to academic debates on the breadth and dimensions of the service literature. Of the five explained knowledge domains, four could be called services marketing themes (customer satisfaction and relationship, service quality and servicescape, service-dominant logic and the service encounter). This is consistent with Javalgi et al. ’s (2006 , p. 13) study, suggesting “the crucial importance of services market research in service settings.” These scholars claimed that marketing research is a key mechanism through which service organizations realize their present and future customers. This present work confirms these authors’ main argument. Considering this key philosophy, naturally, customer satisfaction is the fundamental outcome of the service domain like similar services marketing variables (i.e. market orientation, value creation, cocreation and service encounter).

Third, our study has explored important voids in its clarification of knowledge fields in service research. Service research could be comprehensively studied by adopting various epistemological perspectives to better comprehend service exchange, value cocreation and service designs and encounters. By considering various paradigmatic positions or comparing findings from investigations using various paradigms, researchers could develop the service research discipline ( Tronvoll et al. , 2011 ). Though it cannot be claimed that this study completely mirrors all published service research, the analysis has demonstrated that study domains and the majority of their ingredients suit what could prevalence be considered as “positivistic research” (e.g. service quality, customer satisfaction and customer relationship), whereas monologic or hermeneutic paradigmatic articles and knowledge domains are largely absent (e.g. service-dominant logic, service encounter). Tronvoll et al. (2011) suggest that this predominance of positivistic studies has narrowed down the enrichment of the service research discipline. Thus, service scholars need to enrich service research beyond the positivistic approach to better comprehend the process and progress of the discipline. The dynamic nature of service management and marketing leads to more complex and nonstatic transactions, thus examining a topic or concept often requires various epistemological paradigms to comprehend the relevant phenomena completely. Persisting to use a limited paradigmatic way in the long term, the knowledge field might risk becoming marginalized, because of its complicated, human-interactive and relational characteristics. Thus, future service researchers can follow different paradigmatic points of departure, which can result in the enrichment of novel concepts to both conceptual and practical themes.

Fourth, our study reveals the progress of the service research, with the appearance of technology as a new and critical topic within the knowledge domain. This topic is different in its longevity because it includes the recently published most cited articles. As a shifting and increasing path customers interact with companies to create service value and exchange, service research evolves into a technology-focused domain. Even though this field recently has the smallest number of constituents, the advent of the internet and enrichments in the new-generation technologies, such as AI and service robotics, encourage service scholars to conceptually and empirically analyze the usage of technology in service research. Altinay and Arici (2021) have recently suggested a transformation of services marketing structure in the postpandemic world. The authors proposed new generation technologies as a substitutional actor in services marketing. Considering the transformation of services marketing structure in the postpandemic world, is it possible that technology can be a new actor within the service-dominant logic? Does this field provide the potential to transform mainstream disciplines? Or, may this trend appear as a unique and different knowledge field that requires special concern, such as services marketing or customer behaviors in the discipline?

Our paper has contributed to these knowledge fields by exploring their conceptual foundations. The first and foremost cluster includes studies focusing on customer satisfaction and customer relationships. Most documents in this domain emphasized customer satisfaction as an important concept for achieving service firms’ profitability. Topics of interest consist of recommendation of the service company, remaining loyal to the company, spending more time money and customer repurchase intentions, deriving from customer satisfaction with the service quality. Customer relationships also appeared as a subcluster within this knowledge domain. This cluster includes articles focusing on relationship quality between customers and service providers. Trust appears as a significant concept in the customer relationship. The customer–company relationship can be expanded by future scholars who could investigate customers’ priorities, main needs and expectations in the postpandemic world, because the recent pandemic may transform customers’ behaviors, attitudes and beliefs.

Recent studies have suggested a mixed-service approach that includes both human and technology-oriented service designs to meet customers’ changing needs and expectations in the new world ( Altinay and Arici, 2021 ). Future research could accelerate these recently developed efforts by proposing novel industry-specific models and frameworks in service research.

One extensively investigated services marketing-focused cluster relates to SERVQUAL, a concept and a measure that has been considerably considered in service literature. The service performance scale was developed as a substitute for the SERVQUAL. Many scholars have examined and empirically analyzed the significant influences of these concepts on consumer satisfaction and loyalty. Examining potential moderating and mediating variables on the direct and indirect effects of service quality and service performance on both employee-level and organization-level outputs could improve the knowledge domain. Moreover, service companies have still waited for novel approaches that provide unique remedies for coping with the devastating impacts of the recent pandemic. Thus, scientific endeavors could more focus on redefining the service quality concept and its measurements in the postpandemic world. One possible direction could be proposing a redesigned service encounter where the employee–customer interaction has been revised.

Another investigated cluster relates to service-dominant logic. Service scholars have centered on customer-focused service design. This domain includes vital articles, which theoretically developed an evolving framework from a good-centric approach to a customer-centric approach. Customer cocreation value seems to be the most influential of the service-dominant logic. Customer participation and customer engagement are inherently the main focuses of articles appearing within this cluster. Font et al. ’s (2021) study has recently discussed how shared value can contribute to sustainable supply chain management. Another recent study has examined innovation and cocreation value for peer-to-peer accommodation services ( Casais et al. , 2020 ). Thus, sustainability and innovation could be more emphasized by future attempts to examine their roles in customer cocreation value. This cluster also shows technology as an important factor triggering the evolution of service research in the millennium. Support of this claim, a very recent study proposes changing the marketing channels of hospitality services ( Altinay and Arici, 2021 ). The authors proposed that “service organizations can keep up with developments in cutting-edge technologies, and those technologies can inaugurate a new era in service by replacing human labor in the service encounter” (p. 26). Thus, future research could investigate the role of cutting-edge technologies in customer service. The interrelationship of technology and customer cocreation value could also be investigated. It needs to be clarified whether could the employee-oriented nature of service organizations be replaced by the new technology?

Methodology and market orientation is the third-largest cluster. Many studies from this domain adopt quantitative data analysis. SEM is the dominant quantitative approach appearing in this cluster. This finding endorses the previous research ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ) that found hospitality service research has been dominated by methodology-focused articles, particularly, quantitative research methods (i.e. SEM). This calls for further inquiry on methodology papers in various service industries, such as education and banking. A comparative research that evaluates variances of methodology-focused studies among service industries would pay dividends.

Market orientation-focused studies concentrate on antecedents and outcomes of market orientation as well as management focus on the market orientation that cares about clarifying customer needs and wants and generating services that satisfy them. Whilst the subdomain consists of wide-ranging themes, no particular aspect of market orientation has received constant attention. Low et al. ’s (2007) study determining how market orientation or its related practices interact with the innovation process could be useful to other aspects of market orientation and it could be time to perform qualitative studies on this intrarelationship. Could the predominance of quantitative analysis (i.e. SEM) be replaced by other methodologies, such as mixed-method including both quantitative and qualitative or bibliometric analysis? Or could the panel data approach provide a more comprehensive insight into service research? These are vital inquiries still waiting for academic attention from the service researchers. Furthermore, market orientation is broadly considered from the organization and managers’ perspective, so investigating the link of the market orientation-innovation process is needed at the employee level to examine whether employees are the linking determinant between the concepts of market orientation and innovation.

The last cluster consists of the service encounter. The conceptual foundations of this cluster consist of such themes as service failure/recovery, employee reactions, customer complaints and customer changing behaviors. This domain broadly discusses the employee–customer interaction in the service encounter. However, technology may be adapted as a new way to solve customer complaints and minimize potential service failures deriving from human errors. Thus, a growing academic interest is needed in the adaptation of technology into the service encounter to help industry practitioners in coping with the service failures and consequently customer complaints.

Considering these five main clusters, we provide research questions that can encourage service researchers to conduct further research in the knowledge domain. We also present related theories for each question that can help scholars conceptually underpin their arguments (see Table 2 ).

Beyond these five themes, we also acknowledged that we do not have sufficient knowledge of emergent topics in the service research. As mentioned above, recent efforts ( Altinay and Arici, 2021 ; Casais et al. , 2020 ; Font et al. , 2021 ) addressed the adaptation of such emergent concepts including technology, innovation and sustainability and called for more research on expanding our knowledge of these topics and their adaptation in service environments. Considering these recent calls, we invite future researchers to analyze three main themes (i.e. innovation, sustainability and technology) to further expand our knowledge of new trends and implications in service industries in the new era.

Like its predecessors, this study inherently has some limitations that need to be addressed. First, it is well known that a predominance of self-citations can result in biased citation measures. Yet, this study has covered numerous documents published over a large period. Covering such big data is not easy for any researcher to analyze and interpret the citations at a significant level. Second, this study only considers five highly prestigious journals from the service literature. Service-associated articles published out of these journals have not been involved in the study sample. Future studies could expand the sample and apply temporal threshold values to analyze and visualize the progress of the knowledge domain, which can lead to examining the probability that the weights of several most cited articles could decrease in due course, while others appear.

Network visualization of service research

Studies of intellectual connection in the service research

Future research agenda in services

The most cited 100 articles in the service research:

www.researchgate.net/publication/360024163_Appendix_A-Online_supplement

Note : You may find the Appendix in the link. If you face any issue, please contact authors.

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How to measure service quality

Updated December 19, 2023

It’s imperative that you provide excellent service to your customers . With a wealth of competition, companies that don’t compete on customer experience will lose customers to those that are continually delighting and providing a high quality of service.

However, even companies that understand the need to provide exemplary experiences have a hard time measuring their service quality. Since it’s a qualitative measurement, rather than a quantitative measurement, it can be challenging to assess. Even some researchers have struggled with the issue of how to measure service quality and understand how you’re impacting your customers.

In this article, we’ll list ways to assess service quality and provide actionable insights on how to improve on your findings.

Start measuring service quality today with our free customer satisfaction survey question template

In a general sense, measuring service quality depends entirely on the context and brand promise, and service quality dimensions vary according to the industry. However, the industry standard and most widely-used metric is SERVQUAL.

SERVQUAL is based on a set of five dimensions which have been consistently ranked by customers to be most important for service quality, regardless of service industry. These dimensions defined by the SERVQUAL measurement instrument are as follows:

• Tangibles : appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials.
• Reliability : ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately.
• Responsiveness : willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.
• Assurance : knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence.
• Empathy : the caring, individualized attention the firm provides its customers.

These five SERVQUAL dimensions are used to measure the gap between customers’ expectations for excellence and their perception of the actual service delivered. The SERVQUAL instrument, when applied over time, can help you understand both customer expectations, perceptions of specific services, and areas of needed quality improvements.

SERVQUAL has been used in many ways, such as identifying specific service elements that need improvement, and targeting training opportunities for service staff.

Proper development of items used in the SERVQUAL instrument provides rich item-level information that leads to practical implications for a service manager.

The service quality dimensions evaluated by SERVQUAL should be adjusted for optimal performance in different industries, including public and private sector applications.

SERVQUAL scores are highly reliable, but when used in different industries may fail to produce a clear delineation of the five basic dimensions. Other measures, such as the Six Sigma model should be considered for applicability in quantifying the gap between service expectations and perceptions.

Service quality questionnaires

In order to improve service, you must understand customer satisfaction and customer expectations. This can be done by asking for feedback from your customers using service quality questionnaires . These are typically completed after the service with a follow-up email or paper survey. Following up immediately is the best way to fix any mistakes or clear up misunderstandings before your customers become detractors.

Service quality questions

There are many types of questions that can be asked in a Service Quality Questionnaire. They should focus on the customer’s interaction with the customer service rep (positive and negative), the service and experience overall, and if the customer would use your service again. It’s also good to have a couple open text questions so your customers can write in their own feedback.

Sample questions include:

• The service rep was helpful (strongly agree to strongly disagree)
• Which of the qualities about the service did you like (include a list patient, friendly, attentive, willing to help, empathetic, etc)
• Was there anything about our service that stood out to you? (open-text response)
• Over the next 12 months, how likely are you to use our product or service again (strongly agree to strongly disagree)

Get our free customer satisfaction survey question template

Industry examples

As mentioned before, measuring service quality depends entirely on the context and brand promise, and that varies by industry. To understand if you’re providing good service, you must know exactly what your customers are looking for in terms of service quality.

Below are examples of how service quality is measured in different industries.

Restaurants

In restaurants, service quality tends to focus on timely service (not too rushed or too slow), server attentiveness, and friendliness.

In fine dining restaurants with a fairly engaging experience, an expected part of service quality is the ability to make relevant recommendations. This can be easily measured by a manager asking the customer questions at the end of the meal, such as “how satisfied were you with the server's recommendations?”  The manager can also ask if the order placed was influenced by the recommendation(s).

However, this is clearly not a measure that would be relevant in a quick-service restaurant, showing the importance of context. In quick-service restaurants, things like order accuracy and speed of delivery are more accurate measurements. To gather this data, you can put a link to a survey on a receipt and giveaway a free menu item upon completion.

CX Study: Learn how to increase the ROI of your customer experience

Service quality is especially important in automotive because the customer’s car must be fixed and completed on time. This is mostly focused on the service itself, and less about the interactions with the technician or front desk attendant, except when it comes to trust (because they must trust the professionals' recommendations).

You can ask questions like “how would you rate the quality of the service you received” or “is your car now running like you expected after it was serviced?” You can also ask an NPS question like, “how likely are you to recommend our service to a friend or colleague?”

In retail , you typically ask things about staff product knowledge (think Adidas and knowing what type of running shoe best suits your use) and recommendations.  You can also assess merchandise knowledge (what goes with what), friendliness, and availability (were team members on the shop floor easy to engage).

While there are all very straightforward questions to ask, they can be conditional based on the text comments or score provided on that element.

These questions help to identify both the frequency with which it happens and the customer's satisfaction with the experience.

You can then regress that against the outcome measure and see how big an impact that makes on the overall experience.  This provides direction on what to focus on in your store (or restaurant), and what action you should take. For example, if shoe recommendations are a significant part of the experience and guests are not satisfied - you can provide better merchandise training, and if they are knowledgeable but not making relevant suggestions, retrain to better read guests' interests.

How to take action on your findings

After you’ve defined and measured your service quality, it’s time to take action and create a better service experience. This can be done on an individual or team level.

Learn how to capture and capitalize on customer insights with our eBook: Download Now

Analyze team-wide data

By analyzing data across your team, you’ll get a big picture into where the knowledge gaps are as a whole. For instance, maybe the team lacks product knowledge or customers don’t find them friendly and helpful. Once you understand the collective feedback, you can implement training programs in those specific areas. This will also ensure new employees don’t make the same mistakes.

Analyze individual data

Every service rep has their weakness and developing an individualized service improvement plan can help strengthen every service rep. It’s important to go over the feedback in a positive way and emphasize the positive qualities, but you can also highlight areas of improvement. Individual service reps might be one quality away from exceptional, and it’s the manager's goal to get them there.

Creating great customer service takes time and effort. You must be intentional about collecting feedback, putting that feedback into action, and creating exceptional experiences for your customers.

Want to learn more about creating great customer experiences?

Qualtrics compiled a reading list based on recommendations from CX leaders, you can download that here.

eBook: 16 ways to capture and capitalize on customer insights

Qualtrics // Experience Management

Qualtrics, the leader and creator of the experience management category, is a cloud-native software platform that empowers organizations to deliver exceptional experiences and build deep relationships with their customers and employees.

With insights from Qualtrics, organizations can identify and resolve the greatest friction points in their business, retain and engage top talent, and bring the right products and services to market. Nearly 20,000 organizations around the world use Qualtrics’ advanced AI to listen, understand, and take action. Qualtrics uses its vast universe of experience data to form the largest database of human sentiment in the world. Qualtrics is co-headquartered in Provo, Utah and Seattle.

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New study sheds light on optimising home care support for older people with health care needs

Professor Yun-Hee Jeon  

While not denying Australia’s aged care system needs reform, new research comparing two Australian Government-funded programs suggests we may already have some of the cost-saving answers to keeping older people well and living safely in the community for as long as they wish.

Led by the University of Sydney, a retrospective analysis published in the journal Age and Ageing late last year compared the outcomes and related cost consequences of over 65s taking up Home Care Packages (HCPs) versus those accessing Veterans’ Affairs Community Nursing (VCN).

The analysis of over 40,000 participants found that within five years of accessing services 58 percent of HCP clients had been admitted to an aged-care home, compared with only 27 percent of VCN clients.

The economic analyses found that, for VCN compared to HCP clients, the estimated cost-saving for relevant government providers over five years was over $1 billion. Importantly the research also showed significant cost savings would be made even if the VCN program cost was increased in line with the HCP.

The VCN program is funded by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and is currently available to Veterans Gold Card holders and some Veteran White Card holders. HCP is available to all older people living in the community who are referred and meet eligibility criteria.

Existing research shows the longer older people live in the community, the higher their quality of life and the lower the cost to government. As such, delaying or preventing care home admission by providing the right support has long been an important policy goal, as emphasised again in the recent report from the Aged Care Taskforce.

Lead author Professor Yun-Hee Jeon from the University of Sydney said two of the key differences in the delivery of the Veterans’ Affairs program were a short time to referral and the role of registered nurses.

"The major difference is that the veterans’ program is led and mostly delivered by registered nurses, based on a care plan directly from the registered nurse’s comprehensive assessment, with a very short wait time from a referral.”

The cost savings largely resulted from preventing or delaying aged care home admission which equates to over $90k per person per year.

The other key difference is that the veterans’ program is set up to be accessed periodically as needed, whereas HCP clients tend to retain their service until they die or go into care.

“Numerous conversations with service providers and clinicians suggest that participants in the veterans' program had a mindset of ‘letting it go’ because they were confident, they would be able to access the service again next time they needed it, for example after a fall or bad health spell. By comparison home care clients do not let services go even if their needs decrease, as they are well aware of the 6- to-18 month wait period on service,” said Professor Jeon.

The final report of the Aged Care Taskforce released in March and the new Support at Home Program is planned to be introduced from 2025.

Professor Yun Hee Jeon agreed with recommendations that more emphasis needed to be placed on ‘health related care’ in aged care services and delivery in a timely manner to enable people to remain at home longer. However, she said all reform initiatives proposed to date gloss over the importance of skilled professionals such as registered nurses and allied health professionals for optimising outcomes.

“Using the broad term ‘aged care workforce’ rather than differentiating the skill sets, roles and responsibilities under this umbrella term is not always helpful and can easily dismiss profession-specific issues that need addressing to ensure quality aged care. It also overlooks challenges with attracting and retaining health professionals which are often significantly different from those of other care workers in the sector,” commented Professor Jeon.

“Older persons’ care requires comprehensive assessment by skilled clinicians and planned care based on individual needs, considering available resources and circumstances. The current model forces health care professionals to focus on ‘tasks’ and ‘tick boxes’, rather than using critical thinking and clinical judgement.

“Furthermore, the current HCP assessment is for determining eligibility and levels of care for an allocation of funds. By the time the allocated care is available six months later, that person's care needs have likely changed.”

She said by comparing two existing models of community care, this research highlights the importance of timely care and support from a skilled nursing workforce.

While the paper suggests further economic analysis is needed, Professor Jeon said the research team have confidence in the findings due to the large sample size of this first-of-its-kind study and analyses that considered the cost of the VCN program, the length of stay in residential care and the distribution of HCP types.

Declaration:  The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. This paper draws on analysis done for a research project commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) (Reference ID: DVA-GEN 2019–20/736) titled Investigating Protective Factors of the DVA Community Nursing Program (available at  https://www.dva.gov.au/documents-and-publications/protective-factors-dvas-community-nursing-program-2023 ); however, the subsequent cost analysis study was not part of the project funded by DVA. The opinions expressed therein are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect those of DVA. The Commonwealth does not give any warranty nor accept any liability in relation to the contents of this work.

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