CONSUMERS’ PERCEPTIONS ON THE SERVICE QUALITY IN THE LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

Abstract

Customers are responsible to determine the quality of service (Berry, Parasuraman and Zeithaml, 1988; Cai and Jun, 2001; Lewis and Spyrakopoulos, 2001; Johnson and Nilsson, 2003). Service quality refers to the factor used to measure of how well the services performed actually matched the expectations (Olsen, Sasser and Wyckoff, 1978). Excellent service quality will result in high level of customer satisfaction (Naeem and Saif, 2009). Customers’ perception towards the service delivery and quality can have an impact on long term profit of the organisation (Kee, Kumar and Manshor, 2009). Customer satisfaction is found to be an important tool to create and maintain loyal customer (Aurand, Gordan and Schoenbachler, 2004). Loyal customers contribute more to high and repeated purchase (Hui and Law 2003). The five common variables that are used by customers to evaluate service quality are reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles (Berry et al., 1988).