Review of Conceptualization and Measurement of Service Quality: Addressing Current Higher Education Scenario

With higher education is being driven towards greater competition and privatization, higher education institutions have to be concerned about how students feel about their educational experiences. In today's highly competitive higher education market, a loyal student population is a source of competitive advantage with outcomes such as positive word of mouth (WOM) communication, retention and repeat. And in this context, Service quality is acknowledged as a key performance measure for excellence in higher education. One area in the service marketing literature that has received considerable attention is the conceptualization of service quality. While there is a consensus on the importance of service quality issues in HE, identification and implementation of the right measurement instrument is a challenge that practitioners who aim to gain a better understanding of the quality issues of students’ experiences face. Further, although the definitions of service quality vary, the definitions are all formulated from the customer perspective. This study reviews the past research in the area of Service Quality in general and Service Quality Measurement in higher education in specific. The study focuses on reviewing the most widely used measurement tools for Service Quality and their application in the area of Higher Education. Based on the review of literature, it proposes the research problems to be studied by future studies.