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The Indian banking industry is going through turbulent times. With the lowering of entry barriers and blurring product lines of banks and non-banks since the financial sector reforms, banks are functioning increasingly under competitive pressures. Hence, it is imperative that banks maintain a loyal customer base. In order to achieve this and improve their market positions, many retail banks are directing their strategies towards increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty through improved service quality. Moreover, with the advent of international banking and innovations in the marketplace, customers are having greater and greater difficulty in selecting one institution from another.

Hence, to gain and sustain competitive advantages in the fast changing retail banking industry in India, it is crucial for banks to understand in-depth what customers perceive to be the key dimensions of service quality and to evaluate banks on these dimensions. This is because if service quality dimensions can be identified, service managers should be able to improve the delivery of customer perceived quality during the service process and have greater control over the overall outcome.

The study suggests that customers distinguish four dimensions of service quality in the case of the retail banking industry in India, namely, customer-orientedness, competence, tangibles and convenience. A methodological innovation in this study has been in the use of TOPSIS in the field of customer-perceived service quality. TOPSIS has been used to evaluate and ranking the relative performance of the banks across the service quality dimensions. Identifying the underlying dimensions of the service quality construct and evaluating the performance of the banks across these factors is the first step in the definition and hence provision of quality service in the Indian retail banking industry.

Today the evaluation of service quality is one of the most important management issues for every organization. An important feature of the service process is the degree of customer influence on the service process. A characteristic of service quality evaluation is that it consists of both tangible and intangible factors. In this paper the customers' subjective opinions and the weights of factors are described by linguistic labels which can be expressed in trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. After aggregating these linguistic labels, a linguistic decision–making method is proposed to evaluate the service quality level of each organization. Finally, a numerical example is shown to highlight the procedure of the proposed method at the end of this paper.

The introduction of information and communication technology (ICT) has altered the service delivery around the world by making it more accessible and cost effective across e-service markets. In a country like India the problem of health is an enormous one where a majority of poor are outside the effective medical network. In order to address these problems many information and technology (IT) oriented new ventures have been established to eliminate the gap in health inequity by creating network of hospitals exclusively in non-urban areas. Despite of huge popularity of these services, identifying the quality of such services need careful attention. Exhaustive review of literature highlights that there exists little understanding for such a study in IT enabled Indian healthcare domain in context to new ventures/start-ups with an emergence of a gap. With the increasing rise of technology enabled new healthcare ventures there have been high rates of failure too due to lack of providing quality service, so it has become imperative to prioritize the contextual and sectoral specific settings of service quality issues as it is being felt increasingly that it is the quality that would ultimately decide the value of services. This paper thus attempts to prioritize the context specific service quality dimensions in IT enabled scalable healthcare ventures from Indian context with focus in non-urban regions by deploying technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methodology as multi-criteria decision making technique. Further this paper proposed a conceptual model as conjectural understanding of the antecedents to the start-ups and as a guide that can provides new entrepreneurial insights to the service managers who can better apportion their resource in order to build quality and scalability.

The software industry being highly resource-oriented tries to ensure that knowledge residing in the minds of the employees is effectively utilised for leveraging core business competencies. Therefore, providing effective knowledge management systems (KMSs) to utilise this knowledge for optimising business processes has become crucial for enterprises to stay competitive. This paper attempts to assess the effectiveness of KMS implementations from a knowledge workers’ perspective via six dimensions of the Jennex and Olfman (J&O) KMS success model. Quantitative data was collected through a web-based survey questionnaire from knowledge workers in 25 Indian software companies. Statistical analysis of the study’s model was conducted using SmartPLS® (version 2.0.M3) software for assessment of both measurement and structural models. The empirical analysis of the model’s hypotheses indicated that a knowledge worker’s intent to use a KMS is significantly dependent on Service and Knowledge/Information Quality dimensions of J&O KMS success model. This paper implies that the J&O KMS success model seems to have adequate predictive power for most implied variables with the exception of System Quality. The J&O KMS success model from a practical point of view offers a means for organisations to evaluate and predict the effectiveness of KMS implementations. The results produced in this study may allow KM practitioners to know more about the levers that help to improve their KMS and thus suitably prioritise their investment plans accordingly.

Patient satisfaction in the developing world has not received sufficient interest in the healthcare literature. More importantly, models predicting patient satisfaction seldom incorporates patient perspectives into their measurement providing ill-suited metrics for healthcare administrators to make decisive decisions concerning service quality improvements. The current analysis utilizes original data collected from 336 patients in Jordan. This paper tests whether service quality (SERVQUAL) is suitable to be used in the new context and concluded that SERVQUAL is reliable and valid in supplying stakeholders with reliable and valid information concerning patient satisfaction. Further, the analysis suggests a large gap between perceived and expected services performed by Jordanian hospitals signalling the need to service quality enhancement. The study calls for the adoption of agile and rapid patient screening models in emergency departments to reduce wait times and decrease the number of patients left without being seen. This study constitutes an emerging attempt at better understanding how service quality influences patient satisfaction, and more importantly, introduce affordable and cost-effective solutions capable of improving satisfaction in the short run.

From the theoretical perspective of the elaboration likelihood model and service quality, this study attempts to provide an empirical study of patients’ medical choice behaviour and the moderating effect of disease risk under different paths with a real data set from an online healthcare community. The results demonstrate that factors from the central and peripheral routes affect patients’ behavioural intention regarding online medical choices. Disease risk plays an important moderating role. Low-risk patients are mainly influenced by factors from the peripheral route including doctors’ service reputation and disclosure of service qualifications, while high-risk patients are mainly influenced by factors from the central route including service quality of treatment and reviews quality.

The importance of quality for an organization has been highlighted by many researchers. The service quality of sports organizations is conceptualized by the dimensions of technical (outcome) and functional (process-related) qualities as a significant element of sport product. The purpose of this study is to investigate the level of service quality provided by Greek professional sports clubs, through the satisfaction of spectators, the perceived value and the ability to predict their intentions of behavior. The survey included 940 fans of Greek Super Leagues’ team ARIS THESSALONIKI FC. The results provided support of the service quality models used.

Purpose: This paper aims to analyze the effectiveness of service quality provided in Tirupattur Head Post Office toward Postal Life Insurance (PLI) and Rural Postal Life Insurance (RPLI) polices. Service quality is an important element in the management of service. The post office is a very big service-oriented institution. It started its insurance business from 1 February 1884.

Design, methodology, approach: A descriptive research design were used to study the objective such as analyzing the various service quality provided by Postal Insurer and also to find the best service quality, to achieve this the researcher used questionnaire to collect 85 samples using simple random technique from PLI and RPLI policyholders in Tirupattur district. The primary data are analyzed by applying percentage analysis, mean and standard deviation, $t$-test and $F$-test in SPSS tools.

Finding: A finding of the study shows that postal insurance industry was providing high quality services regarding financial stability accessible location, flexible payments and were providing low quality services regarding online transaction, approaching from the customers point of view, introducing new products. Mean and SD value show positive rating. The $t$-test shows the assurance is the best service quality provided by postal insurer among six service quality factors. All the service quality statements are above average level. $F-$test shows a significant difference of all statement if service quality factors to demographic factors.

Practical implications: This research paper is important for the investors, postal insurer, and post office. Service quality will have positive impact on customer satisfaction that will lead to investment behavior.

Social implications: This study provides awareness to investors about postal insurance, important of service quality to the postal insurer, in the study area and trends-related research for future.

Originality: This study provides a comprehensive review of theories, methods, discussion points, and conclusions of studies on service quality, customer satisfaction, PLI published in selected investment journals over past 20 years.

Research limitations: This study was confined only to Tirupattur Head Post Office and Conclusions drawn may not be applicable to other district post office and, therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalized.

The Indian Postal Services (IPSs) have above 155,333 post offices distributed globally. They are one of the most known and established government-owned institutions with sizable customer bases. They provide accessible and affordable services in India thanks to the unrivalled postal systems with various new services added in the last decades which include money transfers, distribution of mutual funds, and mail/parcel deliveries. IPSs have positioned themselves as dependable agencies for the Government of India. It has a competitive advantage of geographical accessibility. The system has also established centralized core banking solutions with alternative delivery channels enabling everywhere, anytime banking settings in India. Since the current marketplaces focus on clientele; businesses need to regard them as profit-making entities creating needs for high-quality services and management essential for customer satisfaction and retention. Globalization has added to acute competition to IPSs making it imperative to improve the overall quality of their services. This study’s goal is to identify the primary drivers of consumer happiness with IPSs. Since social media is the most widely used for views, references, and product information, this study effort suggests a system based on social media data called Machine learning-based Assessments of Customer Satisfaction Levels in Indian Postal Services (ML-ACSLIPS). Regression analysis and machine learning techniques (MLTs) were used in this study to examine Indian customer satisfaction levels in IPSs.

This study is conducted to identify how corporate social responsibility (CSR) influences consumer loyalty in the banking sector in Vietnam — an emerging economy. The social identity theory, stakeholder theory, and signaling theory are used to answer the question “Does CSR directly or indirectly influence customer loyalty in the banking sector in Vietnam?” To accomplish the research objectives, qualitative and quantitative mixed research methods are used. Qualitative research aims to adjust the scale of constructs to suit the Vietnamese market through face-to-face discussions with 10 Vietnamese customers. A survey is then carried out with 299 Vietnamese customers who have experience dealing with banks in Vietnam. Data collected are processed by Smart Partial Least Square (PLS) software with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Research results showed that CSR has no direct impact on customer loyalty. However, CSR has an indirect effect on customer loyalty through an intermediate variable of service quality. Service quality has a strong influence on customer loyalty. The administrative implications of this research are that Vietnamese banks should consider CSR as a way to help improve service quality, thereby increasing customer loyalty. CSR factors to consider are legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities. To improve service quality to increase customer loyalty, Vietnamese banks need to pay attention to the factors of reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Future research directions that can be implemented include: use stakeholder dimensions for CSR; use other mediators such as brand image, customer satisfaction, and customer trust; and research in other countries with emerging economies similar to Vietnam to increase generalization.

Sense of humor can improve interpersonal relationships and enhance work efficiency. However, people have different concepts of humor, and it is significantly influenced by traditional gender roles. In the tourism industry, male tour guides are expected to constantly have pleasant interactions with customers. However, female tour guides are more often relegated to provide minor services. We proposed a research model from the perspective of a humor style and sex discrimination, probing into female tour guides’ service quality and tourists’ acceptance of it using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The result demonstrates that female tour guides’ can use ‘Affiliative humor’ and ‘Self-enhancing humor’ to construct a convivial group climate and group consensus in order to enhance interpersonal relationship. By having a sense of humor, female tour guides can actively create harmonious interactions and enhance their professional image in the tourism industry. However, female tour guides still encounter sex discrimination and are suppressed by role positioning and power expectations.

Information systems (IS) offshoring has become a widespread practice and a strategic sourcing choice for many firms. While much is known about client issues, the vendor perspective is much less investigated. The vendor perspective is equally important as offshore IS vendors need to make important decisions in order to deliver operational and strategic performance and align their resources and processes in order to meet or exceed targeted outcomes. We propose and test a three-level capability–quality–performance (CQP) theoretical framework to understand vendor outcomes and their antecedents. The first level of the framework represents three vendor capabilities: relationship management, contract management, and IT management. The second level has three mediating variables representing process quality: partnership, service, and deliverable quality. The third level has three dependent variables representing vendor outcomes: operational performance, strategic performance, and satisfaction. Based on model testing with 188 vendor firms in India and China, the CQP framework is supported. Vendor capabilities are significant predictors of intermediate quality measures which in turn affect vendor outcomes. These results have implications for both theory development and IS offshore vendor strategic decision making.

Service quality evaluation has become a main area of interest for practitioners, managers, researchers and policy makers, who have inclined on the passengers' service. In this paper, intuitionistic fuzzy TOPSIS approach is applied to evaluate service quality of rail transit systems of Istanbul. A total of 6553 surveys are conducted and analyzed in seven rail lines with respect to 20 service qualities.

Research that has adopted a service quality measurement model without meeting the requirements of the psychometric approach may lead to questionable results, and the measurement model validated to evaluate city bus service quality does not focus on this potential problem. Therefore, this research seeks to determine the best approach by utilizing a three-step procedure with a confirmatory factor analysis-based competitive model, incorporating a cross-validation sample method and non-nested model competition to evaluate and select the better theoretical framework for assessing city bus service quality models. The results indicate that Lin’s short version BUSQUAL with four factors and fourteen items is more accurate for measuring city bus service quality.

Quality in academic libraries is a multi-dimensional construct. Quality management and quality assurance is part of measuring performance excellence. Libraries are services. To improve service quality, stakeholders' needs and expectations should be monitored and measured, shortfalls should be identified and addressed.

Some basic principles are common to all measurements, but quality metrics will focus on the unique nature and factors that could affect quality of academic library services. Measuring quality includes the resources, resource delivery, the service environment, the management and staff, and the different stakeholders. In the digital environment, the academic library also moves from collection to connection, with new demands and performance indicators. Both quantitative and qualitative measurements are required to evaluate the overall performance of the library. The ultimate goal of measurement is improving the "fitness for purpose" of the library.