Silvestro (1998)

Key concepts:

Error prevention, quality conformance

In the manufacturing literature, the definition of quality in terms of meeting the requirements of external customers was a major and radical departure from the traditional engineering definition of quality in terms of adherence to specification. Elimination of waste. The concepts of error prevention and visibility, zero defects and right first time…

Seth, Deshmukh and Vrat (2005)

Key concept:

Expectation and performance discrepancy

Technical quality (process), functional quality (outcome), image ( Grönroos, 1984 )

Service quality is a function of the differences between expectation and performance along the quality dimensions

Gap 1: Difference between consumers’ expectation and management’s perceptions of those expectations, i.e. not knowing what consumers expect.

Gap 2: Difference between management’s perceptions of consumer’s expectations and service quality specifications, i.e. improper service-quality standards.

Gap 3: Difference between service quality specifications and service actually delivered i.e. the service performance gap.

Gap 4: Difference between service delivery and the communications to consumers about service delivery, i.e. whether promises match delivery?

( Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985 ).

Vieira, Winklhofer and Ennew (2008)

Key concept:

Relationship quality

Relationship quality (RQ) is replacing service quality and/or customer satisfaction as a key source of superior performance and competitive advantage in seller/buyer relationship. Trust, satisfaction, and commitment are the three key dimensions of RQ, while mutual goals, communication, domain expertise, and relational value are also core determinants.

RQ as the degree to which buyers are satisfied over time with the overall partnership as manifested in product quality, service quality, and value for money ( Huntley, 2006 ).

Shahangian and Snyder (2009)

Key concept:

Quality of care

Quality of care as “the degree to which health care services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge.” (Institute of Medicine)

Ladhari (2010)

Key concepts:

Convenience, efficiency, safety, confidentiality

Four attributes with a website: i) ease of use (response speed, navigation support, use of new web technologies); ii) information content (quantity, quality, accuracy, customized information); iii) entertainment (amusement, excitement); and iv) interactivity (e-mail, live-chats, notice boards) ( Alpar, 2001 ).

Bagtasos (2011)

Key concept:

Well-being of work

Family-work balance ( Huang, Lawler & Lei, 2007 ); skills level, autonomy and challenge ( Lewis, Brazil, Krueger, Lohfeld, & Tjam, 2001 ); job security and job stress ( Saklani, 2004 ); management and supervisory style, satisfactory physical surrounding, job safety, satisfactory working hours and meaningful tasks ( Ivancevich, 2001 ); nature of job, stimulating opportunities and co-workers ( Wyatt & Wah, 2001 ); autonomy in decision making ( Lewis, Brazil, Krueger, Lohfeld, & Tjam, 2001 ); belongingness, sense of becoming oneself and sense of being worthy and respectable ( Gnanayudam & Dharmasiri, 2007 ); collective bargaining, industrial safety and health, grievance redressal procedure, quality circles, work-life balance, workers’ participation in management ( Padala & Suryanarayana, 2010 ); work attitude ( Trau & Hartel, 2007 ); job experience of job content and job context ( Ivancevich, 2001 ). In summary, quality work life (QWL) refers to work effectiveness and wellbeing in the work place.

Nicholson (2011)

Key concepts:

Exceptional, consistency, purposeful, accountable, transformative

1) Quality as exceptional, i.e., exceptionally high standards of academic achievement;

2) Quality as perfection (or consistency), which focuses on processes and their specifications and is related to zero defects and quality culture;

3) Quality as fitness for purpose, which judges the quality of a product or service in terms of the extent to which its stated purpose—defined either as meeting customer specifications or conformity with the institutional mission—is met;

4) Quality as value for money, which assesses quality in terms of return on investment or expenditure and is related to accountability; and

5) Quality as transformation, which defines quality as a process of qualitative change with emphasis on adding value to students and empowering them.

( Harvey & Knight, 1996 )

Welzant, Schindler, Puls-Elvidge and Crawford (2011)

Key concept:

Multidimensional

Many researchers agreed that quality is a multidimensional concept ( Green, 1994 ; Vlasceanu, Grünberg, & Pârlea, 2007 ; Westerheijden, Stensaker, & Rosa, 2007 ). Therefore, reducing the concept to a one-sentence definition is problematic ( Welzant, Schindler, Puls-Elvidge, & Crawford, 2011 )

Hietschold, Reinhardt and Gurtner (2014)

Various definitions of quality, with commonalities: 1) fulfilment of customer requirements, 2) specification of products, services or processes, 3) organizational performance and 4) error free.

Herath and Albarqi (2017)

Key concepts:

Exceptional, consistency, purposeful, accountable, transformative

Financial reporting quality includes: relevance, faithful representation, understandability, comparability, verifiability, and timeliness.

Quality has multiple meanings and multidimensional. It reflects various values and interpretation, and thus grounded in values, cultures and traditions ( Adams, 1993 ).

Quality as excellence or goodness and the degree of need fulfillment ( Brunnström, et al., 2013 ; Martens & Martens, 2001 ; Jekosch, 2005 ).

Generic definitions of quality include excellence ( RCGP, 1994 ), expectations or goals which have been met ( Steen & Li, 1988 ), “zero defects” ( Crosby, 1979 ) or fitness for use ( Juran & Godfrey, 1988 ; Campbell, Roland, & Buetow, 2000 ).

Quality of life as physical, functional, emotional and social well-being ( Cella, 1994 ).

1) Excellence or conformance to certain standard (apodictic approach)

2) Perfection or consistency (process specifications, zero defects, getting right the first time)

3) Purpose of product/service, or conformance to requirement (functional fulfillment)

4) Transformation of the participant/buyer (done for vis-à-vis to the customer, i.e. education)

( Harvey & Green, 1993 ; Harvey, 2006 ; Hoyer, Hoyer, Crosby, & Deming, 2001 ).

Hartwig and Billet, (2018)

Jonkisz, Karniej and Krasowska (2021)

Key concept:

Service quality is the gap between customer expectation and customer perception

Problem to measure the quality of a service

1) Intangibility: not countable thus hard to measure

2) Heterogeneity: service quality differs with respect to employees and/or customers

3) Inseparability: service quality depends on the customer perception

( Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985 )

Service quality results from the difference between the customer expectation and customer perception of the service ( Grönroos, 1984 ; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985 ).

SERVQUAL is a gap-model that describes the deviation between expected use of a service and experienced use of a service as the perceived quality of that service ( Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985 ).

Nordic School “defines the dimensions of service quality in global terms as consisting of functional and technical quality”, and the North American School “uses terms that describe service encounter characteristics (i.e., reliability, responsiveness, empathy, assurances, and tangibles)” ( Brogowicz, Delene, & Lyth, 1990 ; Brady & Cronin Jr., 2001 : p. 34)

Findings showed that both SERVQUAL and SERVPERF “scales are adequate and equally valid predictors” of overall service quality ( Carrillat, Jaramillo, & Mulki, 2007 : p. 485).

Harju (2022)

Key concept:

Perceived quality is subjective and relative

Perceived quality is referred as how a consumer’s subjective assessment of the product attributes depends on the consumer’s perceptions, needs, and goals, suggesting that quality is neither absolute nor objective ( Steenkamp, 1989 ).

Perceived quality is also referred as the customer’s perception of the overall quality or superiority of a product or service with respect to its intended purpose, relative to the alternatives ( Aaker, 1991 )

Afful-Dadzie, Afful-Dadzie and Egala (2023)

Key concept:

Information quality is based mainly on functionality

Information quality criteria:

Credibility: source, currency, relevance, justifiability, transparency, authorship

Content: accuracy, complementarity, disclaimer, reliability, clarity, balance

Design: accessibility, usability, links

Disclosure: potential conflict of interest

Interactivity: feedback, chat rooms, tailoring

( Silberg, Lundberg, & Musacchio, 1997 ; AHCPR, 1999 ; Charnock et al., 1999 ; Boyer et al., 1998 )

The Quality Production Process

1) The quality production process occurs when firms use attribute design and process design specifications to convert their resource inputs and those from customers into produced attributes.

2) Within this process, the state of produced attribute quality is an offering’s produced attribute performance relative to the firm’s attribute design specification.

•Attribute design specifies the resource inputs (from firms, customers, or both), attribute performance, and attribute reliability that an offering must deliver.

• Process design implements the attribute design by specifying how resource inputs are converted into produced attributes.

3) Quality control methods consist of a set of procedures for monitoring produced attribute quality and maintaining or improving the process design specifications.

• Offline methods use experiments and simulations to improve produced attribute quality through changes in process design.

• Online methods monitor produced attribute quality and make necessary adjustments to the production process while it is in progress.

• Inspection methods measure resource inputs or produced attributes and reject those that do not meet specifications.

4) Resource inputs are the material and human resources used to generate produced attributes. Material resources include raw materials and intermediate offerings provided by the firm’s suppliers. Human resources include physical labor, knowledge and insights provided by the firm’s employees, suppliers, and, in cases of co-production, its customers.

The Quality Experience Process

1) The quality experience process occurs when firms (alone or with customers) deliver attributes for customers to experience and customers perceive these attributes through the lens of their measurement knowledge and motivation, emotions, and expectations.

2) Within this process, the state of experienced attribute quality is an offering’s delivered attribute performance relative to a customer’s ‘ideal’ expectation.

3) Attribute types

• Universal attributes are those for which customer preferences are homogeneous and measurement is unambiguous.

• Preference attributes are those for which customer preferences are heterogeneous and measurement is unambiguous.

• Idiosyncratic attributes are those for which customer preferences are heterogeneous and measurement is ambiguous.

4) Measurement knowledge is the customer’s ability to assess attribute performance with minimal bias and variance relative to more objective measures.

5) Measurement motivation is the customer’s desire to assess attribute performance with minimal bias and variance relative to more objective measures.

6) Emotion is the set of feelings evoked in customers during the quality experience process.

The Quality Evaluation Process

1) The quality evaluation process occurs when customers compare an offering’s perceived attributes with their expectations to form summary judgments of quality and then satisfaction.

2) Within this process, the state of evaluated aggregate quality is the aggregation across attributes of an offering’s perceived attribute performance relative to a customer’s ‘ideal’ expectation.

3) Expectations are attribute performance reference levels a customer uses when perceiving and evaluating individual attributes.

• “Will” expectations are the attribute performance levels a customer predicts or believes an offering is going to deliver.

• “Ideal” expectations are the attribute performance levels that reflect a customer’s ideal preferences across all offerings in a category.

• “Should” expectations are the attribute performance levels a customer believes competing offerings in a category ought to deliver.

4) Expectation uncertainty is the variance in a customer’s expectation of an attribute’s performance. Each type of expectations has a corresponding uncertainty: ‘will’ uncertainty, ‘ideal’ uncertainty, and ‘should’ uncertainty.

5) Accumulated information consists of stored customer knowledge accrued from a customer’s own experiences, other customers’ experiences, firm strategies (e.g., customer relationship and brand strategies), media reports, and quality signals associated with each attribute.

6) Quality disconfirmation is the aggregation across attributes of an offering’s perceived attribute performance relative to a customer’s ‘should’ expectation.

7) Customer satisfaction is a post consumption judgment that compares an offering’s evaluated aggregate quality with its quality disconfirmation.