Content area
Full Text
Research background
Service quality and its consequences is one of the few topics in services marketing literature that have received extensive academic research for over three decades. Consequently, several researches have established service quality as an important determinant of customer satisfaction which in turn influences customers' loyalty (Headley and Miller, 1993; Spreng et al ., 1996; Hossain and Leo, 2009; Ilias and Panagiotis, 2010; Kuo et al ., 2011). As such, when a firm delivers service quality that meets or exceeds customers' expectations, the possible result will be customer satisfaction and loyalty. Schiffman et al . (2012) therefore argue that service quality is a determinant of whether the consumer ultimately remains with the company (loyalty) or defects to a competitor. Thus, a service organization's long-term success is essentially determined by its ability to expand and maintain a large and loyal customer base (Kandampully, 1998) through service quality that meets or exceeds customer expectations.
Whilst service quality is a concept that is relevant in both manufacturing and services sector, the remarkable growth in the later sector makes the study of service quality within the sector more attractive. For example, in Europe, as in the USA, the importance of services in the economy is increasing, with nearly two-thirds of the European Union Workforce in the service sector (Dibb and Simkin, 2009). Similar findings exist within the non-western economies where according to the CIA World Factbook (2012) the contribution of services to Nigeria's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was estimated at 38 per cent in 2010, being the highest as industry and agriculture parallel 32 and 30 per cent, respectively, in the same year. "According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, the service industry will account for 98 per cent of total employment increase between 2008 and 2018, and nearly 80 per cent of employed people will be in the service industry" (Lamb et al ., 2012).
Given the dramatic growth in the services sector, the footprints of automobile repair services are changing accordingly. Izogo (2013) argued that the demand for automobile repair services have been on the increase whilst there have been a shift from manual to automatic transmission vehicles with more complex systems due to technology changes. Onyekachi (2012) stated that approximately Fixed Figure 1400 billion have...