The development of a tool to assess the quality of service for beverage logistics
Punnatorn Mathong and Panitas Sureeyatanapas
Supply Chain and Logistics System Research Unit, Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Khon Kean University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand
Abstract
The assessment of service quality has received intensive attention over the past few decades. Many tools have been proposed for being used to quantify the level of service quality. SERVQUAL, which divides the term “service quality” into five dimensions (Tangibles, Responsiveness, Reliability, Assurance, and Empathy), is one of the most commonly used tools. However, SERVQUAL is not designed to be instantly implementable in every industry or business sector, but question items belonging to each dimension need to be adjusted to suit their specific characteristics. This study aims to develop the assessment tool, based upon SERVQUAL, particularly for the beverage transportation service. The process started by gathering assessment items from relevant literature. The selected items were modified to suit the beverage logistics industry, and they were then classified into the five dimensions. After that, the validity of the items was confirmed by asking three industry experts to check whether the questions were appropriate and understandable for customers. Next, six experts were asked to provide Item-Objective Congruence (IOC) scores for quantitative validity testing. Subsequently, the adjusted questionnaire was distributed to 29 samples in order to test its reliability, through the Cronbach-s alpha values. The final version of the questionnaire can be used as an effective tool for assessing the quality of service for beverage transportation service providers.
Keywords: Service quality assessment; SERVQUAL; Logistic service provider; Beverage transportation; IOC method
Topic: Industrial Engineering