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Service Quality SERVICE QUALITY - A research on how recruitment companies secure service quality Efendic, Elvira, 901119 Tutor: Halvarsson, Dan International Marketing Programme Examiner: PH. D Oghazi, Pejvak Lajiq, Sabina, 890505 International Marketing Programme Subject: Business Administration Level & Semester: Bachelor Thesis, Spring 2012. “Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change” - Tom Peters Acknowledgement First and foremost the authors would like to offer their sincerest gratitude to the examiner of this research, Dr. Pejvak Oghazi at Linnaeus University, Dr. Vinit Parida at Luleå University of Technology as well as Dr. Magnus Hultman at Leeds University for their valuable feedback during this thesis. The authors also wish to express their gratitude towards their supervisor, Prof. Dan Halvarsson who has been abundantly supportive and has offered this thesis valuable assistance as well as guidance. This dissertation would not have been possible without the cooperative support from the recruitment companies and the respondents. In addition the authors wish to express their sincerest gratitude towards their families who during trials continued to encourage, inspire and support us throughout this thesis. Last, but by no means least, the authors wish to express the sincerest gratitude towards each other for encouraging and supporting one another during challenging times that occasionally occurred during these study years. Title: Service quality - A research on how recruitment companies secure service quality Authors: Efendic, Elvira Lajiq, Sabina Tutor: Dan Halvarsson Date: 2012-05-15 Abstract Background Service quality is considered to be a vital strategy for survival and success in today’s competitive environment. Although there have been an emphasis in quality overall, the research in companies performance within a business-to-business approach is still largely unexplored. Accordingly, service quality in recruitment companies will be interesting to examine in order to explore the business-to- business industry further. Purpose & The purpose of this research is to study how recruitment Research Question companies secure quality in their services. What factors indicate various quality levels? Methodology This is a qualitative study with a deductive approach. Multiple case studies were conducted with a total of six respondents from three companies. Conclusion This research concluded factors that indicate various quality levels in recruitment companies. The collected data that could not be strengthened with the theories was recommended as further research. Keywords: Service quality, heterogeneity, intangibility, gap analysis, self- service, servqual, service quality in B2B. Table of Content 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Problem Discussion .......................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Purpose ............................................................................................................................. 2 2. Literature Review ................................................................................................................... 3 2.1 Theoretical Introduction ................................................................................................... 3 2.2 Aspects of Services .......................................................................................................... 3 2.2.1 Intangibility ............................................................................................................... 3 2.2 Heterogeneity ................................................................................................................... 4 2.3 What is Service Quality? .................................................................................................. 5 2.3.1 Definition of service quality ...................................................................................... 6 2.3.2 Characteristics of the business-to-business market ................................................... 6 2.3.3 Service Quality in business-to-business .................................................................... 7 2.4 Service Quality Methods .................................................................................................. 7 2.4.1 Gap analysis .............................................................................................................. 7 2.4.2 Self Service ............................................................................................................. 10 2.4.3 Method for Measuring Service ................................................................................ 11 2.4.4 Research Question ................................................................................................... 13 2.5 Conceptualization ........................................................................................................... 13 3. Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 15 3.1 Research Approach ........................................................................................................ 15 3.1.1 Inductive versus Deductive Research...................................................................... 15 3.1.2 Qualitative versus Quantitative Approach .............................................................. 16 3.2 Research Design ............................................................................................................. 17 3.3 Data Sources ................................................................................................................... 18 3.3.1 Primary Data ........................................................................................................... 18 3.3.2 Secondary Data ....................................................................................................... 19 3.4 Research Strategy ........................................................................................................... 20 3.4.1 Experiment .............................................................................................................. 20 3.4.2 Surveys .................................................................................................................... 20 3.4.3 Archival Analysis .................................................................................................... 20 3.4.4 History ..................................................................................................................... 21 3.4.5 Case study ............................................................................................................... 21 3.5 Data collection method ................................................................................................... 23 3.6 Data Collection Instrument ............................................................................................ 25 3.6.1 Operationalization and Measurement of Variables ................................................. 25 3.6.2 Interview guideline .................................................................................................. 26 3.6.3 Pretesting ................................................................................................................. 27 3.7 Sampling ......................................................................................................................... 27 3.7.1 Sampling frame ....................................................................................................... 28 3.7.2 Sample selection ...................................................................................................... 28 3.8 Data analysis method ..................................................................................................... 29 3.9 Quality Criteria ............................................................................................................... 31 3.9.1 Content Validity ...................................................................................................... 31 3.9.2 Construct validity .................................................................................................... 31 3.9.3 External validity ...................................................................................................... 32 3.9.4 Reliability ................................................................................................................ 32 4. Empirical .............................................................................................................................. 34 4.1 Discussion of the empirical findings .............................................................................. 34 4.1.1 Intangibility ............................................................................................................. 34 4.1.2 Heterogeneity .......................................................................................................... 36 4.1.3 Gap Analysis ........................................................................................................... 38 4.1.4 Self-service .............................................................................................................. 41 5. Analysis ...............................................................................................................................
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