Management perception of service quality in the hospitality industry

Physical goods 
Services 
Tangible 
Intangible 
Homogeneous 
Heterogeneous 
Production and distribution separated 
from consumption 
Production, distribution and consumption 
happen in simultaneous processes 
A thing 
An activity or process 
Core value produced in factory 
Core value produced in buyer-seller 
interactions 
No customer participation in production 
process 
Customer participate in production 
Can be kept in stock 
Cannot be kept in stock ( Perishable ) 
Transfer of ownership 
No transfer of ownership 
The differences in characteristics between products and services are shown in table 1
The most important characteristics that separate services from goods are that services 
are intangible, are a process or an activity, are produced and consumed at the same 
moment and customers participate to some extent. Another interesting characteristic 
about services is that most of the time a good or product is used within the service 
itself.
2.1.2
 
Quality 
Quality has as well been defined in many different ways in many different literatures.
Juran (1988) identified quality as an attribute which relates to the customer. More 
interesting is in which perspective quality is defined. For example, Grönroos (1990, 36) 
defines quality as what the customer perceives it to be where as Juran (1988, 21) 
defines quality as the features of products or services which meet the expectations of 
customers and lead to customer satisfaction.

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The relationship between both definitions is that quality is a result of an activity. 
Grönroos depicts is as the result as the customer perceives it to be whereas Juran 
depicts it to be the result of having met the expectations of a customer in the sense of 
satisfaction. 
Fitzsimmons ( 1994, 189 ) as well indicates quality as being the result of an activity, but 
in turn states that actual the assessment of quality is done during the service delivery 
process which usually takes place within an encounter between a customer and an 
employee.
For these reasons, quality can then be understood as the result of being satisfied or not 
after having assessed the quality during a service delivery process or staff-customer 
contact depending on the delivery of the service in terms of having met the 
expectations of a customer or not.