An empirical case study on the service quality for traditional Chinese medical clinics

Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry introduced "A Service Quality Model." and further explored the gap between expected quality customers having before receiving the service and perceived quality customers regarding after receiving the service (they call this gap as the perceived service quality gap). In their methodology, customers are asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding both expected and perceived service after they received the service. Since both expected and perceived service quality are rated in one single questionnaire, it is questionable that the results obtained can effectively convey the differences of the gap as originally defined. This research proposed a Service Quality Diagnosis Model to re-explore the perceived service quality gap. A traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinic in Taiwan is used as an example to demonstrate the proposed approach. The first stage of the proposed approach involved developing a suitable scale containing the key service factors to measure the service quality of TCM clinics. The second phase of the proposed approach explored the service quality of the case TCM clinic by analyzing the results obtained from questionnaire filled out by its patients. Different from any exist approach, respondents need to fill out two questionnaires separately before and after they receive services. The proposed research successfully divided perceived service quality into three types: ideal quality, unacceptable quality and satisfactory quality. As with enterprise diagnosis, the research results can effectively help managers to identify abnormalities in current service quality and further to recommend in-time solutions to the problems or countermeasures for continuous improvement.