An alternative measure for assessing perceived quality of software house services

Abstract

Since the notion of perceived service quality and the disconfirmation paradigm were introduced in the IS community, quite a few studies have employed the SERVQUAL scale to measure perceived service quality. However, the instrument's psychometric properties have been seriously questioned, not only within the IS domain but also in many other contexts in which it has been tested. Yet, so far, no attempt has been made to develop and validate an alternative instrument specifically tailored to tackle the provision of b2b services such as those pertaining to MIS design and maintenance, despite the fact that quite a few researchers have made clear the need for doing so. Responding to this gap, the present study reports the results of an effort to validate INDSERV, an alternative to SERVQUAL. According to the findings, when slightly attuned by collapsing two specific dimensions into a single one, INDSERV outperforms SERVQUAL in all tests performed regarding dimensionality, reliability, convergent and discriminant validity as well as in concurrent validity.