PSYCHOMETRIC ASSESSMENT 1

Analysis on Organizational Assessment Using Psychometric Tools

Customer satisfaction means fulfillment of their expectations of a product or a service

derived by doing business and also implies how happy they’re with their transactions and

overall experience with a firm or organization. Service quality assesses how well a delivered

service is in line or conforms to the customer’s expectations. Successful rendering of services

also leads to customer retention and loyalty.

Rationale. Since a decade, the service sector has gained substantial economic

importance in India. Meeting the standards and expectations of the customers as well as

underconsumption due to poor quality are the major challenges faced by the hotel industry.

Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to-

• Study the perceptions of customers on service quality of selected hotels in

India, of which two falls under the category of luxury hotels.

• To study and analyze any service gaps prevailing with respect to hotel

industry, mostly by assessing the most popular model, known as SERVQUAL

scale.

• Treat customer satisfaction and service quality as independent variables and

check to see their effects on behavioral intention, which is treated as

dependent variable.

• Draw inferences thereof, concerning the significance of different dimensions

of service quality, to evaluate the effect customer satisfaction and service

quality has on behavioral intentions and to identify new areas for further

research.

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ANALYSIS

The article, “Customer perception of service quality in luxury hotels in New Delhi,

India: an exploratory study” by Mohsin and Lockyer (2010) assesses the perceptions of

customers on service quality of luxury hotels in New Delhi, India and helps managers to

identify the various hotel management areas that need attention to meet and exceed the

customer expectations. This study used a survey and interview technique, with a large sample

of 271 hotel guests as participants, was conducted at different four- and five-star hotels

consenting to participate. Front office, room service as well as the restaurant were chosen for

the study because they were the most representative of guest contact and service delivery

process. The questionnaire used 7-point Likert scale and most parts of the survey also used

Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) type questions. The IPA analysis revealed that, for

responses relating to front office, room service and in-house café/restaurant, the importance

score was statistically significant to and higher than performance rating. Overall, this study

indicated the significant difference between the expectations and actual experiences of the

guests.

The article, “Analysis of Customer Satisfaction in Hotel Service Quality using

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)” by Gupta and Srivastava (2011) proposed a method to

evaluate service quality in India and take into consideration the case study of Taj Lake Palace

Hotel (five-star) located in Udaipur. Combining the most representative model, American

Customer Satisfaction Index Model (ASCI) with the most prominent feature of hotel

industry, i.e., hotel service quality based on customer satisfaction model (HSQ-CS model)

was built to acquire the perceived service quality, in form of questionnaire, which used 5-

point Likert scale. Four set of questions regarding the overall hotel impression, reception hall,

guestroom and the restaurant, with a total of 32 questions were included. The findings

showed that the service quality of reception hall is most important for customer satisfaction.

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The article, “A Service Quality Model Applied on Indian Hotel Industry to Measure

the Level of Customer Satisfaction” by Sharma (2014) attempts to identify the level of

customer satisfaction in third category of hotels in India, particularly in Ujjain city. The

SERVQUAL model (Parasuraman et al.,1988), having its foundation in the gap model, was

applied to measure the perceived and obtained value of service quality and thereby, to

decipher the level of satisfaction acquired by the customers. The data was collected using a

questionnaire based on 13 SERVQUAL attributes in government and private hotels in Ujjain,

with a sample size of 30 hotel customers. The findings suggested that the government hotel’s

service quality was quite better than private hotel. The factors of government hotel such as

hotel empathy, competence, access and credibility obtained positive difference between

perceptions and expectations as compared to private hotel wherein only two factors, empathy

and credibility obtained a positive difference.

The article, “Customer Perceptions of Service Quality towards Luxury Hotels in

Odisha Using Servqual Model” by Debashish and Dey (2015) empirically evaluates service

quality based on SERVQUAL scale, consisting of five dimensions of service quality namely,

tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, for its usefulness in luxury

hotels in Odisha, India. The questionnaire with a 5 point Likert scale was administered to

eight luxury hotels consisted of two parts- first part measured the perceptions of guests on

hotel attributes using a modified SERVQUAL model and the second part was designed to

capture demographic and travelling characteristics of the guests. The findings suggested that

tangibility, that is, the physical facilities of the hotel, equipment used and the personnel

appearance was seen to be the most important dimension of perceived service quality.

The article, “Customer Satisfaction or Service Quality-Identifying Mediating Variable

and Evaluating Behavioral Intention Model in Hotel Industry: An SEM approach” by Bhakar

et al., (2015) evaluated the causal relationship between service quality and customer

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satisfaction and their effects on behavioral intentions of customers in hotel industry. Survey

was carried on using 29-item scale developed for measuring logistic service quality by

Olorunniwo, Hsu and Udo (2006) was used to collect the data on variable-service quality,

whereas, four item scale developed by Westbrook and Oliver (1991) was used to collect data

on customer satisfaction and three item scale developed on the basis of suggestions given by

Zethmal et al., (1996) was used to measure behavioral intentions, all the three variables were

tested on basis of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method. The results indicated a

strong predicted effect of service quality on both behavioral intention as well as customer

satisfaction, whereas customer satisfaction was found to have insignificant positive causal

effect on behavior intentions of customers. Service quality was also found to be a significant

mediator for customer satisfaction and behavioral intention relationship.

LIMITATIONS

• The studies consider only selected few hotels in India and is therefore, limited to

authenticate the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction.

• The studies consider only few models and dimensions of service quality which make

them partially invalid.

• Three articles study luxury hotels and it is doubtful if their conclusions can be applied

to other kinds of economic hotels.

KEY LEARNING AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• Knowing how the customers perceive service quality and more so, being able to

assess and evaluate service quality can prove to be beneficial to the hotel industry in

terms of their business growth and retention of their customers.

• There is a positive relation between customer satisfaction and service quality.

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• With slight modification on the basis of nature of service-sector, of SERVQUAL

scale, it can be adapted to any organization.

• Developing a strong commitment to service quality rendered by hotel industry by

studying the customer’s attitudes and seeking their feedback will help the hotel

management to identity the areas of disparity in performance and thereby, help to

develop appropriate actions and strategies to address such disparity.

• Furthermore, the same method using SERVQUAL scale can be extended to

explore the different kind of customer preferences and different economic hotels.

• Since the findings showed that SERVQUAL scale is suitable for measuring

service quality in their hotels, the management may use this to study the same

from time to time.

• SEM and HSQ-CS can be expanded to other economic hotels to measure the

difference between perceived and actual customer satisfaction.

• These studies need to be replicated in different sizes of cities for generalizing the

results for hotels located anywhere in India.

• The models of service quality must be built by taking into consideration Indian

Customer Satisfaction Index (ICSI).

• The hotels must be proactive while offering quality services while also

customizing them according to the needs of the customers; offering free and

complimentary services (free WiFi or free shuttle to airport) can be an effective

strategy to attract customers and increase their level of satisfaction.

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References

Bhakar, S.S., Bhakar, S. & Bhakar, S. (2015). Customer Satisfaction or Service Quality-

Identifying Mediating Variable and Evaluating Behavioral Intention Model in Hotel

Industry: An SEM Approach. International Research Journal of Social Science and

Management, 5(2), 111-124. Retrieved from:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sher_Bhakar2/publication/278677943_Customer

_Satisfaction_or_Service_Quality_-

_Identifying_Mediating_Variable_and_Evaluating_Behavioral_Intention_Model_in_

Hotel_Industry_An_SEM_Approach/links/5583080b08ae8bf4ba6f8770/Customer-

Satisfaction-or-Service-Quality-Identifying-Mediating-Variable-and-Evaluating-

Behavioral-Intention-Model-in-Hotel-Industry-An-SEM-Approach.pdf

Debasish, S.S. & Dey, S. (2015). Customer Perceptions of Service Quality towards Luxury

Hotels in Odisha Using Servqual Model. International Journal of Research in

Business Studies and Management, 2(9), 1-9. Retrieved from:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6362/18ad2e0b305599eb4ea61f5b40d2dd4a3ee8.pdf

Gupta, P. & Srivastava, R.K. (2011). Analysis of Customer Satisfaction in Hotel Service

Quality using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). International Journal of Industrial

Engineering Research, 2(1), 59-68. Retrieved from:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ravindra_Srivastava/publication/264555881_An

alysis_of_customer_satisfaction_in_hotel_service_quality_using_Analytic_Hierarchy

_Process_AHP/links/53e729470cf25d674ea58789.pdf

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Mohsin, A. & Lockyer, T. (2010). Customer perceptions of service quality in luxury hotels in

New Delhi, India: an exploratory study. International Journal of Contemporary

Hospitality Management, 22(2), 160-173. Retrieved from:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/32563194/new_delhi_india_serq

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Sharma, C. (2014). A Service Quality Model Applied on Indian Hotel Industry to Measure

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