Quality and customer satisfaction have long been recognized as playing a crucial role for success and survival in today’s competitive market. Not surprisingly, considerable research has been conducted on these two concepts. Notably, the quality and satisfaction concepts have been linked to customer behavioral intentions like purchase and loyalty intention, willingness to spread positive word of mouth, referral, and complaint intention by many researchers (Olsen, 2002; Kang, Nobuyuki and Herbert, 2004; Soderlund and Ohman, 2005). The most commonly found studies were related to the ‘antecedents, moderating, mediating and behavioral consequences’ relationships among these variables customer satisfaction, service quality, perceived value and behavioral intentions. Whether customers are satisfied or not, depends on the balance between customers’ expectations and customers’ experiences with the products and services (ziethmal et al., 1990). The company aims to enhance the customer delivery value by exceeding the customers’ expectations.

In the Indian current context of the global financial meltdown, the Direct to Home (DTH) industry in India is in the era of multifarious challenges and opportunities. The Indian DTH industry players look forward to a seven times multiplication of its market, about 40 million subscribers by 2015, from a total of 165 million pay TV households. From large metros, satellite TV moved to smaller towns that spurred the sale of TV sets and brought about an up gradation from black and white television viewing to the color one. With time, more and more changes took place and finally the DTH services arrived. In India, the DTH industry is undergoing a dramatic transformation and experiencing heightened competition from same industry rivals and cable operators. A clear 20 per cent annual growth is being witnessed in the DTH sector in India with over 8.5 million households having digital pay-TV.

This study aims to interpret the customers’ perception and attitude towards the adoption of DTH technology in India and also identifies the different level in their experience and expectations towards DTH services.

Service Quality has been reported or having apparent relationship to costs (Crosby 1979), profitability (Buzzell and gale 1987; Rust and Zahorik 1992), Customer satisfaction (Belton and Drew 1991; Boulding et al 1993), customer retention (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990).Satisfaction and quality are closely linked to market share and customer retention (Fomell, 1992; Rust and Zahorik, 1993; Patterson and Spreng, 1997). There are overwhelming arguments that it is more expensive to win new customers than to keep existing ones (Ennew and Binks, 1996; Hormozi and Giles, 2004). This is in line with (Athanassopoulos, Gounaris and Stathakopoulos’s 2001) arguments that customer replacement costs, like advertising, promotion and sales expenses, are high and it takes time for new customers to become profitable. And lastly, the increase of retention rate implied greater positive word of mouth (Appiah-Adu, 1999), decrease in price sensitivity and future transaction costs (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990) and, finally, leading to better business performance (Fomell, 1992; Ennew and Binks, 1996; Bolton, 1998; Ryals, 2003).

Researchers operationalize the service quality construct either as a gap between expectation of service and perceived performance of service, or just perceived performance alone (Hurley and Estalami, 1998). On the other hand, service quality dimensions are seen as the criteria to assess service quality (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry, 1985). Feinburg, and de Ruyter (1995) supported this idea as they postulate that the dimensions are instruments for measuring perceived service quality. They also feel that consumer-perceived service quality is usually seen as a multi-dimensional constmct. The earliest research bn service quality dimensions was done by Gronroos (1984). He found that the perceived quality of a service is affected by the experience that the consumer went through for a service. He also pointed that expectation is influenced by traditions, ideology, word-of-mouth communication and previous experience with the service and the consumer’s perception of the service itself determines his perceived service.

SERVQUAL was originally measured on 10 aspects of service quality: reliability, responsiveness, competence, access, courtesy, communication, credibility, security, understanding or knowing the customer and tangibles. It measures the gap between customer expectations and experience.

By the early nineties the authors had refined the model to the useful acronym RATER:

Reliability

Assurance

Tangibles

Empathy, and

Responsiveness

SERVQUAL has its detractors and is considered overly complex, subjective and statistically unreliable. The simplified RATER model however is a simple and useful model for qualitatively exploring and assessing customers’ service experiences and has been used widely by service delivery organizations. It is an efficient model that helps an organization in shaping up its efforts in bridging the gap between perceived and expected service.

Nyeck, Morales, Ladhari, and Pons (2002) stated the SERVQUAL measuring tool “remains the most complete attempt to conceptualize and measure service quality” (p. 101). The main benefit of the SERVQUAL measuring tool is the ability of researchers to examine numerous service industries such as healthcare, banking, financial services, and education (Nyeck, Morales, Ladhari, & Pons, 2002). The fact that SERVQUAL has critics does not render the measuring tool moot. Rather, the criticism received concerning SERVQUAL measuring tool may have more to do with how researchers use the tool. Nyeck, Morales, Ladhari, and Pons (2002) reviewed 40 articles that made use of the SERVQUAL measuring tool and discovered “that few researchers concern themselves with the validation of the measuring tool” (p. 106).

The most popular service quality model in the 1990s (Robinson, 1999) is the model by Parasuraman et al., (1985). Their model supported Gronroos’ findings on the models that are based on these three underlying themes:

The purpose of the study is to analyze the gaps between the expectations and perceptions of the DTH services provided to the consumers. The rationale of selecting the industry and area is well justified. DTH industry is growing, expanding and creating a hyper-competitive environment between the inter firms rivalry among the Cable TV services. Thus this study is relevant in context of understanding the acceptance and expectations level of the customers towards the DTH services. Servqual is widely recognized and used, and it is regarded as applicable to a number of industries. Thus Servqual is used here to calculate the gap in services of DTH industry.

A total of 200 questionnaires were filled up, collected and analyzed. During analysis 35 questionnaires were rejected due to incomplete filling and improper response. The sample consists of different customer profiles (different age groups, profession and gender) from UP and Uttaranchal region of northern India.

The Servqual questionnaire consists of statements categorized into five categories and a 7 point scale was used to collect the customer’s response (Expectations (E) and Perceptions (P)). The gap score is calculated by difference calculated between the expectations and perceptions. Simple analysis was used for the study. Weighted average was used for the data analysis.

Respondents are advised to put a value between 1 to 7 against each twice; one for expectations and another for perceptions. The gap score is calculated and averaged as given above.

The dimension RELIABILITY has the highest gap score but after adjusting with the weights its no more the highest one. This analysis shows that customers are highly dissatisfied with the existing services provided by DTH companies but the TANGIBLE dimension plays vital role in their decision making. The customers are making their decisions on the basis of tangible characteristics of services provided by the companies.

Nyeck, Morales, Ladhari, and Pons (2002) stated the SERVQUAL measuring tool “remains the most complete attempt to conceptualize and measure service quality” (p. 101). The main benefit to the SERVQUAL measuring tool is the ability of researchers to examine numerous service industries such as healthcare, banking, financial services, and education (Nyeck, Morales, Ladhari, & Pons, 2002). Nyeck, Morales, Ladhari, and Pons (2002) reviewed 40 articles that made use of the SERVQUAL measuring tool and discovered “that few researchers concern themselves with the validation of the measuring tool” (p. 106).

In this analysis, SERVQUAL has been used to identify the gaps in DTH services provided to the customers and the expectation level of the customers. The customers are attracted towards the Tangible dimension of the SERVQUAL that gained the highest weightage. DTH Customers are deciding on the basis of equipment/ prodluct provided and economical monthly plans. The perceptions, of the DTH customers are more inclined towards the consistency in the services provided by the DTH providers. In response to it, the DTH providers are able to satisfy their needs in TANGIBLE dimension (Product, plans, catalogues etc) of the SERV QUAL but unable to fulfill the RELIABILITY dimension of SERVQUAL. In past five years, the growth in DTH sector has gained pace and creating a hyper-competitive environment for the DTH players, therefore, a need to study the pros and cons of this industry. This analysis shows the weakness of DTH companies in RELIABILTY dimension of the services. It aids in understanding the needs and expectations of the customers and the various factors enforcing their purchase. Thus it helps in finding the weaknesses in reliability of the DTH providers. SERVQUAL is an efficient model in helping an organization shape up its efforts in bridging the gap between perceived and expected service.

Source: Adapted from various sources (Taylor, 1993; Oliver, 1993; Rust and Oliver, 1994; Spreng and Mackoy, 1996; Choi et al., 2004; Grace and O’Cass, 2005)

REFERENCES