Assessment of perceived service quality using servqual mod-el: a case study of Pakistan international airline (PIA) in-flight hospitality

The service industry is rapidly growing worldwide with latest and sophisticated tools and strategies for satisfaction of their ultimate customers. Provision of an exceptional service is the lifeblood of airline survival, with the airline’s mid-flight operations being the most crucial fragment of the whole service encounter. This study hence quantifies and weighs the perceived service quality against the desired service quality expected by the customers of Pakistan International Airlines during flight operations, through the 5 main dimensions of SERVQUAL exemplified by the 30 service attributes. The main objective of this study is to find out gap between perceived service quality and expected service quality.This research is quantitative in nature, Factor Analysis and one sample T-Test were used for analysis of data and close-ended questionnaires were used to collect the data from sample of 120 passengers who travelled through PIA at least once is last 12 months. According to the results shown by the Factor Analysis, 8 components were retained or extracted out of 30 variables; all the variables have high correlation with components as overall correlation measured by Factor Analysis is 0.804 which is excellent in the practice. According to KMO and Bartlett’s test, the sampling accuracy remained .857 which is quite good measurement. In addition to that, one sample T- test shows that variable Assurance scores 2.88 average mean perception out of 3.0 average mean expectation touches the expectations but not up to desire level of quality. However, other variables like responsiveness, Empathy, Reliability and Tangibility score 2.78, 2.67, 2.67, and 2.64 respectively.Average Mean Difference Gap (P-E) shows variable Assurance reveals low level of gap -0.12. However, this does not fill the quality gap of minimum 3.0 of Average Mean Expectation. This study exhibits tremendous service gap in other variables as Responsiveness -0.22, Empathy -0.33, Reliability -0.33 and Tangibility possesses -0.35 in terms of Average Mean Difference Gap.The necessity of this research study was deeply felt as a thin of number of passengers prefers PIA services. The service quality of PIA is diminishing with poor service strategies, insufficient facilities and lack of inflight hospitality measures for passengers; therefore, this research will help the key decision makers to identify the areas to improve, and take necessary remedial actions.