The End of ServQual in Online Services Research: Where to from here?

Abstract

Service quality, and the ServQual model, with origins in face-to-face marketing before the age of the internet, has been drafted into the role of explaining the perceived outcomes of computer-mediated self-service encounters. These however differ in important ways from face-to-face service encounters. In this conceptual paper, we offer a number of arguments as to why researchers of computer-mediated services should not look back to ServQual for the basis of their theoretical constructs, models and survey items. We suggest by way of alternative that established information systems theory has greater salience and explanatory power for this phenomenon. We also offer some areas of theory that we believe have potential for the study of online service quality that have so far received little attention.