The GAPS Model of Service Quality, in the context of Services Marketing and Marketing Management.

1. SERVICES
MARKETING
CHAPTER - 7
Service Quality GAPS Model

2. INTRODUCTION :
 Effective services marketing is a complex
process that involves many different
strategies, skills, and tasks.
 One of the greatest challenges of service
firms is to ensure continuous quality
services to the customers.
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3. Service marketers have long been
confused about how to approach this
complicated topic in an organised
manner.
The design of effective quality
management process alone can’t
ensure the achievement of the
desired objective.
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4. One approach is that of viewing the
services marketing in a structured and
integrated way as a model called “The
GAPS Model of Service Quality” as
devised by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and
Berry in 1988.
A Model can be defined as a simplified
representation of reality. It simplifies by
incorporating only those aspects of
reality that are of interest to the
modelling.
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5. THE CUSTOMER GAP
 The GAPS model positions the key
concepts, strategies, and decision in
service marketing in correct perspective.
 The most important is the Customer Gap,
which is the difference between
Customer Expectations and Customer
Perceptions.
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6. THE CUSTOMER GAP
Customer Expected Service
THE CUSTOMER GAP
Customer Perceived Service
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7. 1. Customer expectations are standards
or reference points that customers
bring into the service experience.
2. Customer perceptions are subjective
assessments of actual service
experience.
3. Closing the gap between what
customers expect and what they
perceive is critical to delivering quality
service – It forms the basis or the
starting point for the GAPS Model
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8. 4. Because Customer satisfaction and
customer focus are so critical to
competitiveness of the firms, any
company interested in delivering
quality service must begin with a clear
understanding of its customers.
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9. 5. The sources of Customer expectations
are :
1. Marketer-controlled factors (such as
pricing, advertising, sale promises)
as well as
2. Factors that the marketers has
limited ability to effect (innate,
personal needs, word-of-mouth
communications, competitive
offerings).
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10. 6. In ideal situations, expectations and
perceptions would be identical –
customers would perceive that they
have received what they thought they
would and should. In practice this
concepts are often, even usually,
separated by some distance. Broadly,
it is the goal of services marketing to
bridge this distance.
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11. 7. This Customer gap leads to the
following situations :
1. Lost customers,
2. Bad reputation,
3. Negatively confirmed quality,
4. Negative corporate or local image.
8. Service firms need to turn this
negativity to positive results in the
process of bridging the gap by
making perceived quality greater than
the expected quality.
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12. 9. Some marketing experts put this as
GAP No. 1, and some others as No.
5. But it is best to refer it as “The
Customer Gap”.
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13. THE GAPS TABLE OR MATRIX
 The following table gives a tabular form
or the matrix form of the GAPS and their
explanations :
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14. Gap
Description
Gap Between
The Customer
GAP
Customer Expected Service Customer Perceived
Service
The Provider
GAP - 1
Customer Expectations Company Perception of
Customer Expectations
The Provider
GAP – 2
Customer Driven Service
Designs and Standards
Management
Perception of
Customer Expectations
The Provider
GAP – 3
Customer Driven Service
Designs and Standards
Service Delivery
The Provider
GAP - 4
External Communications to
the Customers
Service Delivery
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15. Customer Gap
Gap between Customer
Expectation and
Perception
Customer Perception
Customer Expectation Provider GAP – 1
Not knowing what
customers expect
Provider GAP – 2
Not selecting the right
service designs and
standards
Company / Management
Perception of Customer
Expectations
Customer Driven Service
Designs and Standards
Provider GAP – 3
Not delivering to
service designs
and standards
Provider GAP – 4
Not matching
performance to
promises
Service Delivery
External Communications
to the Customers
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16. THE PROVIDER GAPS
 To close the all important Customer Gap,
the GAPS model suggests that four other
gaps – known as the Provider Gaps need
to be closed.
 These gaps occur within the organisation
providing the service (hence the term
“Provider Gaps”). These include :
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17. THE PROVIDER GAPS (CONTD.)
GAP-1 : Not knowing what customers expect
GAP-2 : Not selecting the right service
designs and standards
GAP-3 : Not delivering to service designs
and standards
GAP-4 : Not matching performance to
promises
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18. THE PROVIDER GAP - 1
Customer Expectations
THE PROVIDER GAP - 1
Company Perception of Customer
Expectations
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19. PROVIDER GAP -1 :
NOT KNOWING WHAT CUSTOMERS
EXPECT
 Provider Gap -1 is the difference between
customer expectations of service and firm’s
understanding of those expectations.
 An important cause in many firms for not
meeting customers’ is that the firm lacks
accurate understanding of exactly what
those expectations are.
 There are many reasons for managers not
being aware of what customers expect :
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20. 1. They may not interact directly with the
customers,
2. They may be unwilling to ask about
expectations, or
3. They may be unprepared to address them.
When people with authority and responsibility
for setting priorities don’t fully understand
customer service expectations, they may
trigger a chain reaction of bad decisions
and sub-optimal resource allocations that
results in perceptions of poor service
quality.
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21. THE KEY FACTORS LEADING TO THE
PROVIDER GAP-1 ARE :
 Inadequate marketing research operation :
 Insufficient marketing research
 Research not focused on service quality
 Inadequate use of market research
 Lack of upward communications :
 Lack of interaction between management and
customers
 Insufficient communication between contact
employees and managers
 Too many layers between contact personnel and
top management
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22. •Insufficient relationship focus :
•Lack of market segmentation
•Focus on transaction rather than relationship
•Focus on new customers rather than
relationship customers
•Inadequate service recovery :
•Lack of encouragement to listen to customer
complaints
•Failure to make amends when things go
wrong
•No appropriate recovery mechanism in place
to tackle service failures
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23. THE PROVIDER GAP - 2
Customer Driven Service Designs
and Standards
THE PROVIDER GAP - 2
Management Perception of
Customer Expectations
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24. PROVIDER GAP -2 :
NOT SELECTING THE RIGHT SERVICE
DESIGNS AND STANDARDS
 For delivering quality service, accurate
perceptions of customers’ expectation are
necessary, but not sufficient.
 Another pre-requisite is the presence of
service designs and performance standards
that reflect those accurate perceptions.
 Frequently the service firms experience
difficulty in translating customer
expectations into service quality
specifications that employees can
understand and execute.
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25. •These are precisely the Provider Gap -2,
which is the difference between the
company’s understanding of customers’
expectation and development of customer
driven service designs and standards.
•Customer driven standards are different
from the conventional performance standards
that companies establish for service in that
they are based on pivotal customer
requirements that are visible to and
measured by customers.
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26. These are operation standards set to
correspond to customer expectation and
priorities rather than to company’s
concern such as productivity or
efficiency.
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27. THE KEY FACTORS LEADING TO THE
PROVIDER GAP-2 ARE :
 Poor service design :
 Unsystematic new service development process
 Vague, undefined service designs
 Failure to connect service design to service
positioning
 Absence of customer driven standards :
 Lack of customer driven service standards
 Absence of process management to focus
customer requirements
 Absence of formal process for setting service
quality goals
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28.  Inappropriate physical evidence and
servicescape :
 Failure to develop tangibles in line with
customer expectations
 Servicescape design that doesn’t meet
customers’ and employees’ needs
 Inadequate maintenance and updating of the
servicescape
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29. THE PROVIDER GAP - 3
Customer Driven Service Designs
and Standards
THE PROVIDER GAP - 3
Service Delivery
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30. PROVIDER GAP -3 :
NOT DELIVERING TO SERVICE DESIGNS
AND STANDARDS
 Once service designs and standards are in
place it would seem that the firm is well on
its way to delivering high quality service.
This assumption is true, but it still not
enough to deliver excellent service. The firm
must have systems, processes, and people
in place to ensure that service delivery
actually matches (or is even better that) the
designs and standards in place.
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31. •Provider Gap -3 is the discrepancy between
development of customer driven service
standards and actual service performance by
company employees.
•Even when guidelines exist for performing
services well and treating customers correctly,
high quality service performance is not a
certainty.
•Standards must be backed by appropriate
resources (people, systems, and technology) and
also must be enforced to be effective, i.e.,
employees must be measured and compensated
on the basis of performances along those
standards.
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32. • Thus even when standards accurately reflect
customers’ expectations, if the company fails to
provide support for those standards.
• If the company doesn’t facilitate, encourage,
and require their achievement, standards alone
don’t produce good results.
• When the level of service delivery falls short of
the standards, it falls short of what customers
expect as well.
• Narrowing Gap-3 – by ensuring that all the
resources needed to achieve that standards in
place – reduces the customer gap.
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33. THE KEY FACTORS LEADING TO THE
PROVIDER GAP-3 ARE :
 Deficiencies in human resources policies :
 Ineffective recruitment
 Role ambiguity and role conflict
 Poor employee-technology-job fit
 In appropriate evaluation and compensation
systems
 Lack of empowerment, perceived control and
teamwork
 Customers who don’t fulfil roles :
 Customers who lack knowledge of their roles
and responsibilities
 Customers who negatively impact each other
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34.  Problems with service intermediaries :
 Channel conflict over objectives and
performances
 Difficulty controlling quality and consistency
 Tension between empowerment and control
 Failure to match supply and demand :
 Failures to smooth peaks and valleys of
demand
 Inappropriate customer mix (Marketing Mix)
 Over reliance on price to smooth demand
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35. THE PROVIDER GAP - 4
External Communications to the
Customers
THE PROVIDER GAP - 4
Service Delivery
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36. PROVIDER GAP -4 :
NOT MATCHING PERFORMANCE TO
PROMISES
 Provider Gap -4 depicts the difference between
the service delivery and the service providers’
external communications.
 Promises made by a service firm thro’ its media
advertising, sales force, and other
communications may potentially raise
customer expectations, the standards against
which customers assess service quality.
 The discrepancy between actual and promised
service therefore has an adverse effect on the
customer gap.
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37. BROKEN PROMISES CAN OCCUR FOR
MANY REASONS :
 Over promising in advertising or personal selling,
 Inadequate coordination between operations and
marketing, and
 Differences in policies and procedures across
service outlets.
In addition to unduly elevating expectations thro’
exaggerated claims, there are other, less obvious
ways in which external communications
influence customers’ service quality
assessment. Service firms frequently fail to
capitalise on opportunities to educate customers
to use services appropriately. They also neglect
to manage customer expectations of what will be
delivered in service transactions and
relationships.
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38. THE KEY FACTORS LEADING TO THE
PROVIDER GAP-4 ARE :
 Lack of integrated service marketing
communications :
 Tendency to view each external communication
as independent
 Absence of interactive marketing in
communications plan
 Absence of strong internal marketing
programme
 Ineffective management of customer
expectations :
 Absence of customer expectation management
thro’ all forms of communications
 Lack of adequate educations for customers
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39.  Over promising :
 Over promising in advertising
 Over promising in personal selling
 Over promising thro’ physical evidence cue
 Adequate horizontal communications :
 Insufficient communication between sales and
operations
 Insufficient communication between advertising
and operations
 Difference in policies and procedures across
branches or units
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40. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER :
CLOSING THE GAPS
 The key to closing the customer gap is to
close the provider gaps-1 thro’ 4 and
keep them closed. To the extent that one
or more of provider gaps-1 thro’ 4 exist,
customers perceived service quality falls
short of their expectation.
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41. The GAPS Model of service quality serves
as a framework for service firms
attempting to improve quality service, and
delivering and marketing service.
The GAPS Model positions the key
concepts, strategies, and decisions in
services marketing in a manner that begins
with the customer and builds the
organisation’s tasks around what is
needed to close the gap between
customer expectations and perceptions.
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42. © Himansu S M / 12-08-2010
END OF CHAPTER – 7
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