Martin O’Neill

Service quality at the cellar door: implications for Western Australia’s developing wine tourism industry

Wine tourism has emerged as a growing area of special interest tourism in Australia, and is an increasingly significant component of the regional and rural tourism product of Western Australia. The increased significance and growing competitiveness of this sector has led to a heightened concern by producers and consumers for the quality of services being offered, and has forced many within the industry to invest in the delivery of higher levels of service quality as a means to achieving competitive differentiation. An integral part of any organisation’s attempt to deliver on this front is a commitment to a process of continuous quality improvement. This requires a systematic approach to quality measurement. Investigates the conceptualisation and measurement of service quality and its importance to the wine tourism industry and reports the findings from a recently‐conducted survey of cellar door customers at four Western Australian wineries. Demonstrates the relative usefulness of the importance/performance methodology for cellar door operators in highlighting how wineries are performing from a customer point of view, and also what is important in terms of performance from the customers’ point of view.

Wine production as a service experience - The effects of service quality on wine sales.

This paper seeks to investigate the conceptualisation and measurement of the service quality construct and its relationship to behavioural intention through an application of the importance‐performance technique within the Australian wine tourism industry. Many winery operators invite customers to their winery and the quality of service during the visit can impact on future wine sales. Research undertaken among a sample of visitors to Australian vineyards showed that service process factors were more closely linked to wine purchase than tangible elements. The study also provides further support for the use of importance‐performance models of service quality, as this measure was found to be significantly related to two dimensions of behavioural intention.

Quality evaluation in on‐line service environments: an application of the importance‐performance measurement technique

This paper investigates the conceptualisation and measurement of service quality in on‐line service environments. It reports the findings from an exploratory study of consumer perceptions of service quality as they relate to an on‐line library service in a prominent public sector university in Western Australia. The results reveal the core service quality dimensions of significance to on‐line consumers and demonstrates the usefulness and relative simplicity of this measurement methodology for evaluating the service quality construct in on‐line environments. The study highlights not only how the service is perceived from a customer point of view, but also what is important to the customers in their use of on‐line services.

An exploratory study of the effects of experience on consumer perceptions of the service quality construct

The SERVQUAL methodology has been challenged on a number of grounds, including the failure of many researchers to replicate the original SERVQUAL factor structure, and the unrealistic notion that consumers can form expectations about a service when they have little prior knowledge about the product. This paper explores the role of experience on the dimensions of service quality. An exploratory survey is reported in which a sample of visitors to a theme park was divided into two groups according to their level of experience of theme parks. A factor analysis of the data indicated a more complex factor structure for the group with prior experience of theme parks.

Wine Production and Tourism Adding Service to a Perfect Partnership

Tourism to the world’s wine-producing regions has grown rapidly in recent years, as travelers seek the opportunity to sample wineries’ products at the cellar door. The key to the continued growth and success of such enterprises lies in meeting customers’ expectations for service and products. One way to determine whether that is occurring is through an Importance Performance Analysis, which reveals how well an operation is performing on the attributes that are most important to guests. A study of wineries in Western Australia that used a modified SERVQUAL methodology found that operators are, on balance, performing well on the most important product and service attributes, based on a sample of 353 visitors to two wineries. The chief disconnect between the customers’ expectations and the wineries’ product was that the tourists expected a chance to taste the wineries’ premium products, but those vintages were not always available for tasting or incurred an additional charge.

Diving into service quality – the dive tour operator perspective

Seeks to investigate the conceptualization and measurement of service quality and its importance to the dive tourism industry. It reports the findings from a recently conducted study of dive tourist perceptions of service quality as they relate to a tour operator running tours on an artificial reef dive experience in Western Australia. The study also assesses the importance assigned by consumers to the various service quality attributes relative to those perceptions. The results are of significance to operators in that they identify clearly the managerial implications of providing a quality service during the dive tourism experience.

The effects of perceptual processes on the measurement of service quality

Methods of measuring service quality have suffered from a lack of discussion about perceptual processes involved in a consumer’s evaluation of quality. Most importantly, it is the perception of service quality at the time of the next purchase decision that may better explain repeat buying behaviour, rather than the traditional measure taken immediately post‐consumption. This paper reports on a study of visitors to an adventure theme park. A longitudinal study employing a modified SERVQUAL scale observed that perceptions of service quality declined with the passage of time. Perceptions of items of high importance and those involving tangible elements declined the least. Changes in individuals’ perceptions over time were found to be associated with changes in behavioural intention.

Survey timing and consumer perceptions of service quality: an overview of empirical evidence

Reports on a program of research to learn more about the effects of survey timing on customers’ perceptions of service quality. Argues that an individual’s perceptions of service quality may not be stable over time and that suppliers should be particularly interested in consumers’ perceptions at the time that the next re‐purchase decision is made, rather than the period immediately following consumption. Reports empirical evidence on a number of studies from the hospitality, tourism and higher education sectors in Western Australia. States that results to date cast doubt on the wisdom of the traditional exit survey approach to service quality assessment. Warns that the information derived from the traditional exit survey may not necessarily bear any relation to the chances of converting one time customers into lifetime customers. It follows that the major pre‐occupation of many organisations with measuring perceptions during or immediately following service consumption may have little relevance to service quality perceptions which are important in subsequently forming future re‐purchase intentions.

The effects of survey timing on perceptions of service quality

Disconfirmation models of service quality have attracted a lot of discussion about how consumers’ expectations are formed, but relatively little about the nature of their perceptions of service performance. This paper seeks to redress the absence of literature on the psychological underpinnings of perceptions in disconfirmation models of service quality. It argues that an individual’s perceptions may not be stable over time and that suppliers should be particularly interested in consumers’ perceptions at the time that the next repurchase decision is made. A model of the time elapsed effects of service quality perception is presented and research reported on a longitudinal survey of hotel customers’ perceptions.

Emotional antecedents and outcomes of service recovery

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to investigate the service recovery experience in the luxury hotel industry by introducing emotions as a predictor of future behavioural intention and to compare traditional cognitive measures of satisfaction following a recovery process with measures based on affect. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed-methods approach was adopted comprising a main quantitative study, preceded by an exploratory qualitative study. Findings – The study provides further support for the use of emotions in understanding consumer behaviour following a service failure. Research limitations/implications – As an abstract concept, we have only limited physical, measurable manifestation of emotions, and the construct is difficult to operationalise in social sciences research. Furthermore, this research has required retrospective self-reporting of emotions. Practical implications – The use of emotions can provide a better diagnostic tool for understanding attitudes that customers go away wit...