The Multidimensional and Hierarchical Structure of Perceived Quality and Customer Satisfaction

[[abstract]]Despite two decades of study and debate as to the conceptual nature of service quality remains divergent. The former defines service quality using overall categorical terms, whereas the latter uses descriptive terms. Both perspectives highlight important aspects of service quality, but neither fully captures the construct. Lately efforts to integrate the two schools provided qualitative and empirical evidence that service quality is multidimensional, hierarchical construct. This article provides a view of the relationships between service quality and customer satisfaction when the former is operationalized as a multidimensional, hierarchical construct. Results show that the relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality is significant at any level of abstraction of the latter indicating that each subdivision is appropriately conceived as an important aspect of service quality. However, a certain degree of the explanatory power of the dimensions of service quality is loss as the degree of abstraction increases. Likewise, each level of abstraction presents a unique picture as to how the dimensions and subdivision inter-relate among themselves in influencing customer satisfaction.[[journaltype]]國外[[booktype]]紙本[[countrycodes]]GB