Service Quality in Pharmaceutical Businesses Between Perceived and Expected: An Applied Study on Governmental Hospitals in Egypt.

• Author: Elkhouly, Sayed M. Elsayed
• Position: Report

INTRODUCTION

Globalization is challenging every industrial manufacturer and service in order to be able to stay in competition. High competition, complicated technology, constricted laws and regulations are a challenge for every industry, whether they will be able to exist with improvements or move away instead of facing failure. There are about 830 pharmaceutical companies in the Egyptian market "yellow pages Egypt." This situation allows them to compete, giving and maintaining excellent service. This study will discuss the service issue from one side, which is the intermediate customer "Physicians and Pharmacists."

Based on quality perspective, Zeithmal, Berry and Parasuraman (1985) developed characteristics of quality dimension which is used by customers in order to evaluate service quality. According to Tjiptono (2001, p. 70) Parasuraman et al. found five dimensions of service quality:

Tangibles, covering physical facility, equipment, officers and communication. Tangible is the most important dimension of service quality, which comes into contact directly, such as the condition of the physical building. Reliability, which is the ability to give service immediately, with a satisfactory result, also matching what had been promised. Responsiveness, which is the ability of a company to respond to customer requirements effectively, quickly, and precisely. Assurance includes ability and trustworthiness, which must be essential in all staff, civility and also free from danger, risk and or doubtfulness. Empathy includes easy communication, politeness and attention to customer requirements.

AIM OF THE WORK

The aim of this study is to evaluate the service quality of pharmaceutical companies that are represented to health care professionals as customers and define the area to work on in order to know the type of education, information and training required for employees of pharmaceutical companies.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Design of the SERVQUAL instrument was based on the statement which states that perceptions of service quality, like satisfaction, are determined by discrepancies between perceptions of quality and expectations. The twenty-two pairs of items on the scale were generated with one half of the paired items designed to measure consumer expectations of service quality and the other half intended to measure perceptions of service received. Responses were measured on a five-point Likert scale ranging from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree." The strength and direction of service quality was determined by subtracting the expected service scores from the perceived service scores and summing them.

PZB 1985 found SERVQUAL to be reliable and valid for all five service categories. The reliabilities of each dimension as well as the overall reliability of the scale were consistent across industries. The factor loadings showed five dimensions of quality for each service category. Convergent validity was assessed by comparing overall SERVQUAL scores and scores of each dimension with a question rating overall service quality.

Significant relationships were found. "Reliability" of service was consistently the most important dimension that affected overall service quality for each service. The second most important service dimension was found to be "assurance." The importance of the other dimensions varied depending on the types of services provided.

The scales were later refined and reassessed for telephone repair, retail banking, and insurance services. Changes were made in the expression of expectations questions to reflect expectations of "excellent" service companies. The use of negatively worded questions was also discontinued because of higher reliability with positive questions. The authors found the same five-dimensional scale, reliability, and factor structure as in the original 1988 study.

Measures of service quality have been linked with behavioral intention. Bitner (1990) found service quality to be a significant predictor of the likelihood of recommending, repeat purchase, switching, and complaining behavior. Woodside, Frey, and Daly found a relationship between service quality and intentions to use hospital services, mediated by satisfaction. Bolton and Drew found service quality to be a predictor of value which then resulted in behavioral intention.

Headley and Miller (1993) concluded that significant relationships exist between SERVQUAL measures and the intent to repurchase, compliment, complain, recommend, switch, and not use medical services. However, Cronin and Taylor (1992) did not find service quality significantly related to purchase intentions. They found service quality to be antecedent to satisfaction which affected purchase intentions.

Recent empirical investigations have raised questions about the appropriateness of using SERVQUAL to measure service quality. While few dispute that the questions in SERVQUAL adequately capture the overall domain of the service quality construct, other disputes have arisen over situations that lead to theoretically unacceptable conclusions, its use as a generic measure along with the appropriateness of the disconfirmation pattern in measuring service quality.

There are certain situations in which SERVQUAL seems inappropriate to some critics. The first occurs when SERVQUAL indicates the service is good when it is, in fact, bad. The service could be rated very low but be considered "good" because expectations could also be low. Teas (1993) states that this is because the definition of expectations is...