Understanding the Demographic Variations in Service Quality Perception: An exploratory study on cellular industry of Pakistan

Abstract

There always subsists a gap between quality perceived by the
customers and the quality delivered to them. There have been
many attempts to fill out this gap. This study aims to spot out the
result of demographic factors on quality perception. This paper is
an attempt to understand the service perception as Johnston
(1995) suggests that identification of service quality determinants
is one of the important issue to the marketers, and to get an insight
that how these perceptions may vary among different ages, genders
and education levels. All these demographic variables tend to
depict variations in personality and the mindsets of people. This
paper will facilitate the marketing practitioners to get an insight
about what customers think about quality and how marketers
should plan their marketing efforts to attract their favorable
market group.An exploratory research was conducted to obtain the
view point of the cellular users. Well-known service market mix of
7 Ps’ (People, Procedures and physical evidence, additional to
conventional 4 Ps) is used to design the questionnaire using AHP.
Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) categorizes thoughts, intuitions & reasons in a logical way to make decisions. Though
the marketing theorists and practitioners lay a great prominence
on the further 3 P’s (People, Process and Physical Evidence) for
the service marketing but outcome of this research suggest that
customers take the conventional 4 P’s as crucial for service quality
and additional 3P’s can be taken as supportive elements.