Guru's view The perceived service quality concept a mistake?

Christian Gronroos

The author Christian Gronroos is Professor of Service and Relationship Marketing at the CERS Centre for Relationship Marketing and Service Management, Hanken Swedish School of Economics, Finland. Keywords Service quality, Perception Abstract Compares traditional marketing models to service marketing models, stating that the most important characteristic of services is the fact that services are processes, not things. A service firm has no products, only interactive processes. Whereas the consumption of physical products can be described as ``outcome consumption'', the consumption of services can be characterized as ``process consumption''. In this context, describes the development of the perceived service quality concept. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.mcbup.com/research_registers The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emerald-library.com/ft

Managing Service Quality Volume 11 . Number 3 . 2001 . pp. 150152 # MCB University Press . ISSN 0960-4529

The most important characteristic of services, and probably the only really unique one, is the fact that services are processes, not things. Other characteristics such as the fact that consumption and production are partly simultaneous activities and that customers participate in the service production process follow from the process characteristic. This means that a service firm has no products, only interactive processes. A product variable should, therefore, not enter a service marketing model. A need-satisfying, physical product exists before consumption starts. Products are outcomes of a production process. In a service context, in contrast, a need-satisfying equivalent of a product emerges gradually for the customer throughout the consumption process. Hence, a service is a process that leads to an outcome during partly simultaneous production and consumption processes. This is quite different in nature from a physical product, and indeed, the terms we still use (e.g. production process, productivity, even consumption) are manufacturing-oriented concepts that do not always fit the nature of services well. Compared to the marketers of physical goods, who offer tangible products, service firms rely on a set of resources employees, physical resources, technology and systems, and customers and a governing system that puts these resources to use when the customer requests a service. The interactions between the customer and the quality-generating resources controlled by the service provider form the heart of service marketing. Since the late 1970s, in the service marketing literature this has been labelled interactive marketing. This marketing process is then supported by more traditional external marketing activities, such as advertising, pricing and direct response activities. In traditional marketing models, the product is the starting point for decisions about marketing communication, distribution and pricing (to use the marketing mix language of consumer goods marketing). In a service marketing model, the starting point for planning is not a product but a service concept, that is, an idea about how the quality-generating resources should function and what result they should achieve for the customer. In my research into service marketing I became interested in service quality because of the notion of the missing product, not because of

150

The perceived service quality concept a mistake?

Christian Gronroos

Managing Service Quality Volume 11 . Number 3 . 2001 . 150152

an interest in quality per se. Something was needed in a service marketing model that replaced the product features embedded in the pre-produced physical product. The natural way of finding the service-oriented equivalent of product features is to ask the question ``What do customers of services see in a service as a need-satisfying solution when they do not see and perceive any ready-made product features?'' The obvious answer seems to be, ``They see and perceive the process they are involved in as consumers of the service as well as the outcome of this process.'' Hence, whereas the consumption of physical products can be described as outcome consumption, the consumption of services can be characterized as process consumption (Gronroos, 1998). In other words, there are no physical products to manage in service marketing, only resources and a system that governs the process that produces a result for the customer. Clearly something is needed to replace the product concept. The question is how is the service concept transformed to something that provides satisfaction, that is, how is the satisfaction-providing process perceived by customers of services? The answer was the perceived service quality model, which was first presented in English in 1982 (Gronroos, 1982). The consumer, of course, perceives what he or she receives as the outcome of the process in which the resources are used, i.e. the technical or outcome quality of the process. But he or she also, and often more importantly, perceives how the process itself functions, i.e. the functional or process quality dimension. Thus, the technical quality and functional quality dimensions of perceived service quality emerge. To me, the technical and functional quality dimensions of a service replace the product features of a physical product, nothing else. Because customers often have continuous contacts with the same service firm, a dynamic aspect is also needed in a service quality model. Customers bring their previous experiences and overall perceptions of a service firm to each encounter. Therefore, the image concept was introduced as yet another important component in the perceived service quality model, so that the dynamic aspect of the service perception process was taken into account as well. Originally, I never thought that the perceived service quality model would be anything other than a conceptual model that

would help researchers and practitioners to understand the need-satisfying elements of a marketing model in a service context. It was developed to provide the services equivalent of product features and how to cope with them, much in the same way as the goodsoriented product concept helps marketers understand how to cope with the same issues in a goods-oriented marketing model. I imagined that how well perceived service quality dimensions serve customers' could and should be measured with customer satisfaction with the service. Quality as such should not be measured. However, service marketing research took another avenue here. In retrospect, I should probably have used the terms technical and functional features of services instead of technical and functional quality dimensions of services. We should probably have had a model of perceived service features instead of perceived service quality. That way, much of the confusing and time-consuming discussion of the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction could have been avoided.

References
Gronroos, C. (1982), Strategic Management and Marketing in the Service Sector, Chartwell-Bratt (published in the USA in 1983 by the Marketing Science Institute), London, UK. Gronroos, C. (1998), ``Marketing services: a case of a missing product'', Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 13 No. 3-4, pp. 322-38.

(Dr Christian Gronroos is Professor of Service and Relationship Marketing at Hanken Swedish School of Economics Finland (Svenska Handelshogskolan) and chairman of the the board of the research and knowledge centre CERS Centre for Relationship Marketing and Service Management of the School. He is responsible for the service and relationship marketing and management research and education programme at the School and together with Professor Uolevi Lehtinen, University of Tampere, in charge of a nationwide doctoral programme in the same field in Finland. He has written several books, one of which is Service Management and Marketing. Another, Managing the Moments of Truth in Service Competition has been published, from 1990, in eight languages. He has also written

151

The perceived service quality concept a mistake?

Christian Gronroos

Managing Service Quality Volume 11 . Number 3 . 2001 . 150152

numerous articles on service management and marketing, service quality, and relationship marketing. A renewed version of Service Management and Marketing. A Customer Relationship Management Approach was published in 2000. He is a member of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica (Finnish Society of Science and Letters) and The Academy of Marketing Science. In 1985 he received the Ahlsell Award for outstanding research into marketing and distribution, which is the highest award bestowed on a marketing scholar in Scandinavia, and in 1990 he received the Erik Kempe Award for his textbooks in service marketing and management. In 1999 as the first non-American he received the American Marketing Association's (Service Interest Group) Award for Lifetime Contribution to the Services Field. He has also been recognized as one of the three most frequent contributors in the English language to the service marketing literature, and as the internationally most frequently cited Finnish researcher in the field of business administration. Several of his articles have been published as lead articles in international scholarly journals. In a study, conducted in 2000, of the academic impact of contributors to the Journal of Business Research during the period 1985-1999, it was noted that Dr Gronroos had the highest relative academic impact. His most recent books and articles are outlined below. Service Management and Marketing. A Customer Relationship Management Approach, John Wiley & Co, Chichester and New York, NY, 2000 (ISBN 0-471-72034-8).

``The NetOffer Model: a case example from the virtual marketspace'' (together with Fredrik Heinonen, Kristina Isoniemi and Michael Lindholm), Management Decision, Vol. 38, Vol. 4, 2000, pp. 243-52. ``Internationalization strategies for services'', Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 13 No. 4/5, pp. 290-7, 1999. ``Relationship marketing: challenges for the corporation'', Journal of Business Research, Vol. 46 No. 3, pp. 327-35, 1999. ``Word-of-mouth referrals in the domain of relationship marketing'' (together with Kirsti Lindberg-Repo), The Australasian Journal of Marketing, Vol. 7 No. 1, 1999, pp. 109-17. ``Marketing services: a case of a missing product''. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 13 No. 4-5, 1998, pp. 32238 (Citation of Excellence/Highest Quality Rating by Anbar Electronic Intelligence). ``Integrated marketing communications: the communications aspect of relationship marketing'' (together with Kirsti LindbergRepo), The Integrated Marketing Communications Research Journal, Vol. 4 No. 1, 1998, pp. 3-11. ``Value-driven relational marketing: from products to resources and competencies'', Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 13 No. 5, 1997, pp. 407-19. Comments on ``Nordic perspectives on relationship marketing'' (together with Evert Gummesson and Uolevi Lehtinen), European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 31 No. 1, 1997, pp. 10-16.)

152