In 1985, Parasuraman et. al stated that there is insufficient knowledge to understand service quality. In order to fully understand service quality, service characteristic needs to be fully acknowledged (Parasuraman et. al, 1985). According Bateson (1997), Berry (1980) and Lovelock (1981), most services are intangible meaning most services are cannot be counted, measured, inventoried, test and verified in advance.
Therefore, many firms find it difficult to understand consumer’s perception on their services and evaluate service quality (Zeithaml, 1981).The second characteristic of services are heterogeneous and it is true for services that are high labour content as their performance often varies from producer to producer, from customer to customer and from day to day. Booms and Bitner (1981) stated that behaviour consistency of service personnel is difficult to assure because customer may receives entirely different from what firms intended to deliver. According to Carmen & Langeard (1980), Gronroos (1978), Regan (1963) and Upah (198), the third characteristic of service is the production and consumption of many services are inseparable.Parasuraman et.
al (1985) summarized that the development of Servqual scale is driven by: Service quality is difficult for the consumer to evaluate than goods quality Service quality perceptions based on consumer comparison between consumer’s expectation and actual service performance Quality evaluations are made from outcome of service and the process of service delivery To develop the Servqual scale, Parasuraman et. l (1985) has conducted exploratory investigation in four service categories which are retail banking, credit card, securities brokerage and product repair and maintenance.In the investigation interview, Parasuraman et. al (1985) reported that consumers evaluated service quality by comparing expectations of the service to be received with the perceptions of actual received service based on ten dimensions; tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, communication, credibility, security, competence, understanding / knowing customers, courtesy and access.From the exploratory investigation, Parasuraman et.
al (1985) also discovered there are gaps regarding perception of service quality and the tasks associated with service delivery to consumers. These gaps are consumer expectation-management perception gap, management perception-service quality specification gap, service quality specifications-service delivery gap and service delivery – external communications gap.
