GAP ANALYSIS OF SERVICE QUALITY USING SERVQUAL MODEL: A STUDY OF CONSUMERS SATISFACTION IN PAKISTAN APPAREL BRAND

Abstract

Service quality and its connection to customer satisfaction and loyalty are crucial for all businesses in today’s competitive environment. The apparel industry which is expanding globally, operates in a very dynamic environment, where constant updating and renewal of the product line is essential to retain customers to meet their high and varied demands. It becomes critical for apparel brands to track consumer satisfaction with service quality over time, pinpoint the variables that influence it, and then search for areas for development. Therefore, this research aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of women's clothing brand service quality on its clients’ satisfaction by finding the gap between perceived and expected quality of service using the SERVQUAL model. Through a questionnaire survey, data was collected from 150 customers of a particular Pakistani clothing brand from different outlets in the city of Karachi. The results revealed that the customers were satisfied with the brand in all five dimensions of SERVQUAL i.e. tangibles, reliability, empathy, assurance and responsiveness and has a positive relationship with customer satisfaction. However, empathy and responsiveness were the two aspects that needed to be focused on to outperform in service quality