Service quality. A context-specific measure of customer-perceived service quality in the insurance industry: scale development and validation

Abstract

Stimulated by changes in the legal and social environment, the insurance industry is increasingly moving to a more service-based industry. Insurers and intermediaries are forced to reconsider their customer service, as customers can expect more professional and comprehensive services. A more concrete conceptualization of how these customers perceive service quality can help intermediaries to enhance the quality of their customer service to more satisfactory levels, or even levels that create loyalty.

Until now, other researchers have usually promoted the use of generic applicable scales to measure service quality. However, with the use of generic measures scales, one could not fully address the crucial issues relevant to an industry specific service context. Hence, the purpose of this study was to develop a measurement scale which more precisely captures the concept of service quality in the insurance industry context. To develop and validate the scale, the present study used an adoption of the scale development process of Netemeyer, Bearden and Sharma (2003). Both qualitative and quantitative research were conducted to validate the proposed scale. Finally, the (in)direct effects of the scale were compared to the (in)direct effects of the SERVQUAL-scale.