Measuring Life Insurance Service Quality: An Empirical Assessment of SERVQUAL Instrument

With the entry of so many players in the field and the consequent competitive activism, the entire gamut of the service sector is witnessing a multi-dimensional, purposeful, consumer-friendly approach, shedding off the lethargy that had come to be associated with the sector. One of the leading insurance companies of the service sector, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India has experienced an equally profound impact of competition. One of the greatest challenges forcing the life insurance player is to differentiate its services through quality improvement. The aim of paper is to test the reliability and to examine the dimensionality of SERVQUAL instrument in the life insurance sector. Besides, the study has identified deficiencies in the specific areas of service quality where concentrated efforts are required to be made. Data has been collected from 337 customers from three cities of Punjab to know their perceptions and expectations level at seven point Likert scale towards service quality of LIC. The findings of the study indicate that the gap scores do not merge into five dimensions of service quality; rather, the perception scores merge into three dimensions. Evidently, SERVQUAL instrument cannot be applicable to the Indian life insurance sector and further research is necessitated to comprehend the service quality within the Indian context