Sports services' quality assessment

Straipsnyje apibrėžiama sporto paslaugos samprata. Aptariamas paslaugos kokybės vertinimo tikslas – nustatyti, ar vykdoma veikla faktiškai atitinka laukiamą idealią įsivaizduojamą veiklą. Analizuojamas vartotojų lūkesčių ir suvoktos paslaugos kokybės matavimo būdas – SERVQUAL metodika.Sports organizations often provide to customers services, and not manufactured goods. Many authors and their empirical researches justify the services and goods-producing organizations upon differences in their management features. Unlike the commodity, which is a tangible physical object, the service is difficult to immediate and dwindling phenomenon, offered and consumed at the same time. The most common exceptional features of the service are: impalpability, unsustainability, diversity / variability, and the identity. Sports services can be classified into the professional and consumer services. Professional services – are custom for each client and for the relatively high-skilled labor services. Consumer services are defined as limited services to the general market. They provide relatively low-skilled labor. Quality of service is not easy to define, because the quality can be objective or subjective. Objective relates to the quality of the external tangible things that can be measured, the facts. The quality of the affected user’s imagination, personal experiences, emotions, expectations, and attitude is being assessed subjectively. Another important aspect of quality of service – it can only assess the use of time, as the services, unlike goods, are the product of experience, they can only be used. Quality means more than to create a better-than-average product at an affordable price now. Today, the quality means constant improvement of products and services, defining competitive prices. The provision of services can be defined as any episode in which the user contacts with the service companies, and the impression of its quality of service. Such contacts are particularly important for services firm, because they significantly affect the consumers’ needs. User’s opinion about the service depends on the service process. Shaping the quality of the company’s image has a direct im Shaping the quality of the company’s image has a direct impact on operational productivity, customer satisfaction. It is no coincidence that states that good quality does not cost anything, the poor quality – it cost a lot, because the loss of the service user. Quality is one of the reasons for success. It may be the means to overcome the competition, so the quality of services, its management, these days the service economy and the service are marketing tools and the main problem. In the service quality in all organizations must be a huge focus, as the quality of the company’s image has a direct impact on its operational efficiency, profit growth, and customer satisfaction. Worldwide known scientists P. Parasuraman, V. Zeithaml and L. Berri in 1988 developed a model that compares the user’s expectations with the actual user attainment of the service. This model was named SERVQUAL model. The model starts from the assumption that the quality of the service determines the difference between consumer’s expectations and the actual services provided. In the case of this method, the service quality is measured by the following five dimensions: tangibility, reliability, competence, sensitivity, empathy. SERVQUAL methodology is used to identify inconsistencies between the recognized quality of service and user expectations for each of the quality dimension of the claim, evaluate the company’s quality of service provided by each service quality dimension, the two competing companies to compare the quality of the service, to identify the individual segments of the service users, to understand the differences between service quality assessment. The object of the article is the assessment of sport services’ quality. The main purpose of the article is to reveal the theoretical aspects of the assessment of sport services’ quality and its importance for an organization. The methods used for the research were the systematic analysis of scientific literature, comparative logical analysis and generalization. The main information source was the scientific literature of Lithuanian and foreign authors