Measuring perceived service quality in urgent transport service

In marketing literature, the study of service quality has focused on customer evaluation. The knowledge of consumer perceptions with regard to this complex construct constitutes powerful information for measuring company performance and for managing strategic projects. This fact is a critical factor in industries, such as the urgent transport service sector, in an environment in which a growth in the number of quality certifications has been prominent in recent years. The development of a valid tool for measuring perceived quality in this specific service has been proposed testing a hierarchical and multidimensional model, where service quality is a higher-order construct underlying four primary dimensions, which are defined by nine subdimensions. This conceptualization has been conceived after a qualitative research and the literature revision. The authors test this multilevel structure through a series of confirmatory factor analysis based on the partial disaggregation technique, and support the results with the cross-validation study. The implications and limitations of this research are discussed. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.