Service Quality Variance across Demographic Variables: An Empirical Assessment of Hotel Industry in Northern India
Keywords:
Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction, SERVQUAL, SERVPERF, Demographic, Variables, Hotel Industry and Northern IndiaAbstract
Service operations worldwide are affected by the new wave of quality awareness and importance. As a result, service-based companies are obligated to provide excellent services to their customers in order to have sustainable competitive advantage especially in the current trend of trade, liberalization and globalization. Since service quality predominantly is about meeting customers' needs and requirements and how well the service level delivered matches customer expectations, delivering high quality services will enable companies to achieve customer satisfaction and, in turn, to increase their repurchase intention. Moreover, successful hotel industries of the future will be those that will analyze markets based on customer perceptions, design a service delivery system that will meet customer needs, and enhance the level of service performance in order to delight their customers rather than merely satisfying them. In view of this well-known belief, an attempt has been made in the present study to measure service quality variation in hotel industry of northern India across demographic variables with a view to offering suggestions to make the overall services in hotel industry more effective and efficient. The study is based on data gathered from six hundred sixty three (663) respondents; the results lead us to the conclusion that service quality of hotels in Punjab is comparatively better as compared to the hotels of Jammu and Kashmir, and suggests improvement in all dimensions to augment the quality of hotel services. Finally, the study also brought to light that there exists an insignificant variation in service quality on majority of demographic variables in all hotels of northern India under reference.
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