Total Quality Management in the Archeological Museums of Greece

Abstract

A widely accepted method of measuring the quality of services is SERVQUAL, introduced by Parasuraman, Zeintham, and Berry in 1985. SERVQUAL measures the gap between the expectations and the perceptions of the customers about the efficiency of services based on five dimensions: (1) tangibles, (2) reliability, (3) responsiveness, (4) assurance, and (5) empathy. Subsequent studies have examined the effectiveness of this model in various fields, such as retail trade and tourism (Finn XXABSTRACT Lamb, 1991; Maher et al., 2011). Various critics of this tool state that there is greater focus on customer perceptions than on customer expectations, so that the gap between expected and actual service performance cannot be accurately determined (Daskalaki et al., 2020). In addition, the use of SERVQUAL in measuring the quality of services in museums is quite ineffective. For this reason, Frochot and Hughes (2000), based on the service quality model SERVQUAL, developed another specialized model for evaluating cultural services, the HISTOQUAL scale. The main approach of HISTOQUAL is based on the comparison between visitor perceptions and their expectations. The article analyzes the HISTOQUAL in the Archeological Museums of Greece.