On the Reliability and Validity of the Servqual Instrument in South Africa

The past few years has seen a proliferation of literature in the area of effective management of service organizations. A major theme has been the focus on service quality and its link to business performance, with the finding that superior service quality translates into higher profits. Consequently the measurement of service quality has become critical. One instrument which has become widely used in research in this area is that of SERVQUAL. Originally conceptualised, developed and validated in North America, SERVQUAL has also been widely employed elsewhere. However, the instrument is not without criticisms and international and cross-cultural validation is limited. In this paper an examination is presented of the reliability and validity of SERVQUAL in a Southern African context. Comprising four separate studies in disparate industries, the findings lends support to the instrument’s trans-national and cultural stability. Simply, the results show that the instrument is generally valid and reliable in a South African context; however, as with replication in other contexts, aspects of nomological and discriminant validity can be called into question. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the study(ies), recommendations for measuring service quality in a broader Southern African context, and outlines directions for future research.