This document discusses the GAPS model of service quality. It describes the customer gap as the difference between customer expectations and perceptions, and identifies four provider gaps that must be closed to close the customer gap. The four provider gaps are: 1) not knowing what customers expect, 2) not selecting the right service designs and standards, 3) not delivering to service designs and standards, and 4) not matching performance to promises. Key factors that can lead to each provider gap are identified, such as inadequate marketing research, lack of customer-driven standards, and failure to deliver according to established service designs and standards. The goal of the GAPS model is to understand and close all gaps to ensure customer expectations are met or exceeded.

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36. 2 of 42
Services Marketing - Service Quality GAPS
Model
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Himansu S Mahapatra
, Chartered Consultant at Dibyajyoti Consultants,KIIT-TBI, Bhubaneswar
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37. Published on Jul 23, 2013
The GAPS Model of Service Quality, in the context of Services Marketing and Marketing
Management.
Published in: Business, Education
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Abdullah Khalid at Iqra University
hey i need to download these slides or kindly email me at abdullah.2008@yahoo.com
3 days ago
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Buddhima Rupasinghe , Graduate Research Assistant at National Science Foundation Sri
Lanka
can you let this download please?
4 months ago

Himansu S Mahapatra , Chartered Consultant at Dibyajyoti Consultants, KIIT-TBI,
Bhubaneswar
Thanks so much! Pls visit my Articles at http://www.scribd.com/Hisema Slides at
http://www.slideshare.net/hisema And Photos at www.500px.com/himansu
4 months ago

38. 
debbie_chiu0117
awesome slides!
4 months ago
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Shacha Gyeltshen
it makes me n my research work easy...thank you sir
1 year ago
Services Marketing - Service Quality GAPS Model
1. 1. SERVICES MARKETING CHAPTER - 7 Service Quality GAPS Model
2. 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. 2
3. 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. 3
4. 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. 4
5. 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. 5
6. 6. THE CUSTOMER GAP Customer Expected Service THE CUSTOMER GAP
Customer Perceived Service 6
7. 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 7

39. 8. 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. 8
9. 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). 9
10. 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. 10
11. 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. 11
12. 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”. 12
13. 13. THE GAPS TABLE OR MATRIX  The following table gives a tabular form or the
matrix form of the GAPS and their explanations : 13
14. 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 14
15. 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 15
16. 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 : 16
17. 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 17
18. 18. THE PROVIDER GAP - 1 Customer Expectations THE PROVIDER GAP - 1
Company Perception of Customer Expectations 18
19. 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

40. expectations are.  There are many reasons for managers not being aware of what
customers expect : 19
20. 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. 20
21. 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 21
22. 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 22
23. 23. THE PROVIDER GAP - 2 Customer Driven Service Designs and Standards THE
PROVIDER GAP - 2 Management Perception of Customer Expectations 23
24. 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. 24
25. 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. 25
26. 26. These are operation standards set to correspond to customer expectation and priorities
rather than to company’s concern such as productivity or efficiency. 26
27. 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 27
28. 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 28
29. 29. THE PROVIDER GAP - 3 Customer Driven Service Designs and Standards THE
PROVIDER GAP - 3 Service Delivery 29

41. 30. 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. 30
31. 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. 31
32. 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. 32
33. 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 33
34. 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 34
35. 35. THE PROVIDER GAP - 4 External Communications to the Customers THE
PROVIDER GAP - 4 Service Delivery 35
36. 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. 36
37. 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

42. customers to use services appropriately. They also neglect to manage customer
expectations of what will be delivered in service transactions and relationships. 37
38. 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 38
39. 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 39
40. 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. 40
41. 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. 41
42. 42. © Himansu S M / 12-08-2010 END OF CHAPTER – 7 42
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