Journal of Marketing Management 2001, 17, 595-607

Tony Six Sigma and Service Quality: Christian

Woodall1 Grönroos Revisited
Grönroos’ 1984 deconstruction of service quality led him to
conclude that its principal components were technical
quality, functional quality, and corporate image. A later
model, developed by Parasuraman, Berry and Zeithaml
(1985), is more widely known however, and represents the
point of departure for much of marketing’s extant research
concerning the evaluation of services. Despite similarities
between the two it is the latter which has captured both
public and academic imagination and which, in the process,
Nottingham has determined our preconceptions regarding what service
Business School, quality might be. Due in part to misinterpretation and
Nottingham Trent misunderstanding, the PBZ model has helped shape a view of
University, UK service quality that now over-emphasises the functional and
under-represents the technical and, to a degree, has
encouraged within the marketing fraternity a presumption
that ‘service quantity’ stands proxy for ‘service quality’.
This paper suggests that perceptions and expectations have
now taken over from reality and needs, and explains how Six
Sigma service quality might be the spur that could cause us
to re-address the structure and meaning of this crucial
property.

Introduction

Grönroos’ 1984 deconstruction of service quality led him to conclude that its
principal components were technical quality, functional quality, and
corporate image - the latter primarily determined by both conventional and
emergent marketing techniques, but also substantially dependent upon both
expectations and perceptions regarding the first two. Explicit in this model is
the assumption that service products have both ‘instrumental’ and
‘expressive’ outcomes and, following Swan and Comb (Grönroos 1984, p. 38),
that “satisfactory performance” regarding the former “is a prerequisite for
satisfied customers”.
Though legitimacy of the Grönroos model has never been seriously

1Department of Strategic Management and Marketing, Nottingham Business School,

The Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU, Tel: (0115)
848 4313, Fax: (0115) 848 6420, e-mail:tony.woodall@ntu.ac.uk
ISSN1472-1376/2001/05-60595+12 £4.00/0 ©Westburn Publishers Ltd.
596 Tony Woodall

questioned a later multi-dimensioned structure - developed by Parasuraman,

Berry and Zeithaml (1985), subsequently refined and used as the founding
concept for SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Berry and Zeithaml - PBZ 1988) - is
more widely known, and represents the point of departure for much of
marketing’s extant research concerning the evaluation of services. Although
the two constructs reveal a shared advocacy of the ‘disconfirmation of
expectations’ concept (derived from studies concerning satisfaction - see
Oliver 1997) they differ significantly regarding the dimensional composition
of ‘service’ itself. Whereas Grönroos is explicit in respect of the contrasting
‘hard’ and ‘soft’ aspects of service output, the PBZ model implicitly favours
the functional via an assumption that the object under evaluation is
inevitably characterized by perishability, heterogeneity, intangibility and
inseparability of production and consumption (PBZ 1985): that, effectively,
service quality pertains primarily to expressive attributes of a service product
and that, always, services are “performances or actions rather than objects”
(Zeithaml and Bitner 2000, p. 12).
In turn, the PBZ invention has encouraged a highly constrained reading of
‘service’ - one that implicitly denies the importance of attributes that might
be best associated with consistency and longevity, and that promotes the
presumption that service is insubstantial and transient. Equally, those
service elements which are most likely performed before or after contact with
the customer, or which might rely substantially on an essentially physical
presence for their character, have been effectively sequestered from the
marketers’ domain. And despite the enquiry/criticism that the PBZ model’s
ubiquity has inevitably attracted (Buttle 1996), and evidence that consumers
view quality and satisfaction attributes as separate and distinct (Iacobucci,
Ostrom and Grayson 1995) SERVQUAL remains the most widely applied
measure of service quality today (Sivadas and Baker-Prewitt 2000).

Service Quantity and Service Quality

Because acceptance on such a massive scale has almost entirely excluded

consideration of any other interpretation, service quality has effectively
become SERVQUAL, and vice versa. Despite numerous suggestions
regarding reappraisal and restructuring (Robinson 1999) expectations of
what service quality might be - fed by the sheer mass of PBZ-inspired
literature - have now become our perception of what service quality really is;
and this perception continues to inform mainstream service quality research
today (e.g. Furrer, Shaw-Ching Liu and Sudharshan 2000: Lee, Lee and Yoo
2000; Wirtz and Bateson 1999). Even where work is primarily focused on the
technical and functional aspects of service quality, the SERVQUAL
dimensions may still be used to inform, or even determine, their structure
 Six Sigma and Service Quality 597

(Mittall and Lassar 1998).

Recent literature (e.g. Ravald and Grönroos 1996; Parasuraman and
Grewal 2000; Woodruff 1997) holds that service quality remains a potent
force in marketing but, primarily, as a fundamental component of customer
value. Customer value is perceived as one of the principal drivers of
customer satisfaction which, in turn (given appropriate intensity and
relevant market conditions - Jones and Sasser 1995), acts as a key
determinant of repurchase and, ultimately, of customer retention and loyalty.
Irrespective of a specific author’s intent, however, we likely perceive the
service quality element in this relationship as PBZ’s service quality - one that
properly emphasises the functional, but which, coincidentally, also under-
emphasises the technical.
Largely as a consequence of the above, in today’s market-speak service
quality is interpreted as ‘customer service’ and, moreover, it has come to
imply more, rather than better. Thus, improved service quality means (for
example) 24-hour call centre access rather than, say, trains on time, every
time; it means delighting hotel guests with unexpected tokens of
personalised devotion rather than, say, assuring the continuously developing
competence of hospital laboratory staff, or the systematic enhancement of
product support processes. In other words, service quantity stands proxy for
service quality, and the essence of quality - doing things better, consistently -
has been lost in the translation.
As a consequence, the connection of ‘quality’ to ‘service’ is now anchored,
unreservedly - by association - to heterogeneity and diversity. No longer
does service quality imply achievement of the highest possible standards of
execution within the service sector; service quality is now viewed as an
essentially functional property - an indispensable, but variable, process-
oriented component of any ‘product consumption system’ (Mittal, Kumar
and Tsiros 1999). The idea that goods and services are entirely separate and
mutually exclusive elements of the consumption experience is now, rightly,
disappearing (Rust, Keiningham and Zahorik 1996) and today all consumers
expect and demand ‘service quality’. But, within the voice-simulated world
of the never-sleep helpline, the emptiness of its commitment-to-service
rhetoric now shadows the inexorability of its growth, and “In the worst cases
politeness is becoming a substitute for service” (Seddons 2000).
From a marketing perspective we now appear to be underestimating and
under-representing the instrumental (or technical, or core) aspects of those
products that are essentially service oriented (McDougall and Levesque
2000). PBZ’s ‘reliability’ may imply output dependability but, in reality, is it
more about vacant promises (“will call you back in 5 minutes”) than
protecting the customer from an inefficient and/or negligent system of
work?
598 Tony Woodall

Although it might be difficult to remember the last serious goods recall that
pertained to the UK, there have been a number of quality ‘disasters’ that
have occurred recently within the service sector: the following spring to
mind - the rail industry (numerous derailments, and their consequential
impact on schedules), the Scottish Department of Education (late/incorrect
examination results), Barclays Bank (problems with internet security),
regional health services (a variety of surgical, clinical, and administrative
failures); and one of the key breakdowns in the putative dot.com retail
revolution - late, or undelivered goods.

Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction

We may think also of the less extraordinary, but still infuriating impact of
technical failure in our everyday lives; a delayed house sale completion,
perhaps, or a poorly executed motor repair. When considering, for example,
customer concerns regarding security of information, on-time delivery, trains
that remain on their tracks, or a car which runs reliably, then satisfaction is of
secondary concern and perfection becomes the object of desire. Our needs
become more relevant than our expectations and dissatisfaction with failure
the dominant emotion. And ‘customer service’ may not help: “... if the core
aspect of the service fails, positive evaluation of the peripheral aspects will be unable
to compensate.” (Gabbott and Hogg 1998, p. 116).
Based on a study of 45 different service businesses, Keaveney (1995)
concluded that, “The largest category of service switching was core service failures,
mentioned by 44% of respondents. Core service failures included all critical
incidents that were due to mistakes or other technical problems with the service
itself.” (p. 76). As a result of this she goes on to suggest that “a ‘zero defects’
philosophy to deliver technically correct services every time should be effective in
reducing customer defections.” (p. 79).
Yet, within the marketing domain there is an ongoing fixation with the
positive, and primary, impact of never-ending addition and enhancement.
Dawes and Rowley (1999, p. 47) observe, “The literature on service quality, for
example, has focused on the identification of service quality dimensions, or the
aspects of the service experience which are central in generating positive customer
evaluations of service quality. This is symptomatic of the preoccupation with the
definition and understanding of positive concepts such as quality and satisfaction,
instead of negative concepts such as dissatisfaction...”
Recent research (Babin 1998) suggests that satisfaction and dissatisfaction
are potentially separate, uni-polar constructs; that consumers simultaneously
reflect upon two separate continua when evaluating the quality of a service.
In ‘The Joyless Economy’ (1976) Igor Scitovsky reported on the discovery by
neurophysiologists (in the 1950’s) that there are two distinct ‘brain centres’ -
a ‘pain’ area controlled by a punishment or aversion system, and also a
 Six Sigma and Service Quality 599

reward area containing both primary and secondary ‘pleasure’ systems.

Findlay (1967) noted that the aversion system exerts a greater influence on
behaviour than the pleasure system, and that dissatisfaction is both stronger
and more enduring than satisfaction. Mittal, Ross and Baldesare (1998) have
since reported the asymmetrical impact of positive and negative product
performance evaluations in a service environment, and the
disproportionately influential power of the latter.

Six Sigma

In the United States service organisations are now taking dissatisfaction

seriously. Recent applications of the primarily manufacturing-oriented Six
Sigma philosophy to services (Kim 2000; Pande, Neuman and Cavanagh
2000) point to the potential economic value of refining relevant business
processes to deliver absolutely predictable, defect free, service products - that
is, the creation of perfect technical quality. Here is a concept whose time,
perhaps, is about to come.
The Six Sigma concept was one of the key outputs of Motorola’s late
1980’s ‘Bandit’ programme. Though primarily concerned with best practice
regarding the automation of semi-conductor manufacture, the project also
became metaphorically synonymous with the attendant ‘borrowing’ of
management ideas/techniques from the Far East (Henkoff 1989). From
Japan, Motorola ‘appropriated’, or perhaps more properly ‘re-appropriated’,
the ‘zero defects’ philosophy that had earlier been championed by Philip
Crosby (1979). Infusing this into an indigenously innovating culture
Motorola re-interpreted and re-branded ‘zero defects’ as Six Sigma, a name
suggestive of a hitherto unrealised statistical holy grail.
Essentially, there fore, ‘six - sigma’ is ideologically and practically
connected to processes and their improvement, and represents an
aspirational benchmark for technical quality achievement. In a 1997 letter to
General Electric shareholders, CEO Jack Welch reported “The Six Sigma
quality initiative, very briefly, means going from approximately 35,000 defects per
million operations, which is average for most companies, including GE, to fewer than
4 defects per million in every element in every process that this company engages in
every day” (Hendricks and Kelbaugh 1998, p. 48). For GE, and for many other
adherents (including its progenitor, Motorola) numbers are paramount, but
more recently Six Sigma has undergone something of a conceptual transition,
and the calculus of perfection is now giving way to a more idealised
abstraction of its core philosophy. This transition can, perhaps, best be
visualized via a sequential consideration the following set of ‘reference
points’ suggested by McClusky (2000, p. 7):-
600 Tony Woodall

• Six Sigma: methodology for step reduction of defects to a target of 3.4 per
million opportunities.
• Process focus: Six Sigma aims to highlight process improvement
opportunities through systematic measurement.
• Six Sigma goal: defect reduction leading to cost reduction.
• Six Sigma stretch goal: customer satisfaction through perfect product
delivery.

Though the above taxonomy begins with an uncompromising statement

concerning Six Sigma’s primary focus/cynosure, it quickly moves on to a
final, and resounding, epigrammatic expression of its potential for any - but
especially a service-oriented business environment. No hitches,
impediments, dilemmas, crises, encumbrances, difficulties or
embarrassments in service delivery. No mistakes, misdoings,
misjudgements, misfortunes or misadventures - the development of an
unimpeachable base for the subsequent delivery of perfect, and expectation-
exceeding, functional quality.
Yilmaz and Chatterjee (2000) discuss Six Sigma as a ‘metaphor for
excellence’, a way of thinking about business rather than, necessarily,
concentrating on the numerical absoluteness of 3.4 defects per million
opportunities. Erwin and Douglas (2000) suggest “It’s irrelevant whether
perfection is possible. Companies have reduced defect rates by factors of 10 and 20
annually, when unshackled by pre-suppositions that it’s impossible”. Though the
most dramatic examples are in manufacturing, Citibank, the international
financial arm of Citicorp, has reduced its service failure rate by more than a
factor of ten in three years (Rucker 2000). Citibank’s objective is to become
the ‘premier international financial company’ through initiatives that “satisfy
customers flawlessly and quickly at the point of every interaction anywhere around
the world” (Rucker 2000, p.36)
Whether the adoption of the Six Sigma ethos by service businesses is a
response to increasing expectations from customers, or whether this is an
opportunistic strategy determined as an innovative means of achieving
competitive advantage by a small number of pioneering firms is, as yet,
unclear. However, there are now clear indications that some substantial
service-based, or service-dependent, organizations - Citibank, Motorola,
American Express - see commercial possibilities in the pursuit of perfection.

Perception and Reality

Six Sigma’s emphasis on defect-free processes signals a new interest in the

‘realities’ of service quality. Despite Grönroos’ insistence on the binary
nature of his 1984 construct, when ‘quality came to services’ (Reichheld and
 Six Sigma and Service Quality 601

Sasser 1990) it drove right past technical service attributes and settled
comfortably on the more overt aspects of service delivery where perceptions
count for more than reality.
Although the Grönroos view of service quality still relies heavily on the
notion of customer perception for its structure and definition it is used here
in an entirely literal sense and signifies observation, or sighting. Though
probably without intent, PBZ’s ‘customer perceptions’ are of a different
complexion and invoke more delusory manifestations of an experience -
apprehensions perhaps, or ‘understandings’.
The PBZ view of service quality suggests, for example, that the doctor’s
diploma stands proxy for the ability to cure; that the lustre and complexity of
the service engineer’s tools carry a promise of skill and learning (Zeithaml,
Berry and Parasuraman 1990). Bopp (1990), in fact, reports that at least in a
health service environment customers are unable to effectively evaluate
technical aspects of service and instead use functional cues, almost
exclusively, to determine their evaluations. They gain, as a consequence,
impressions rather than knowledge.
But might these impressions, or perceptions, be sometimes no more than
mere apparitions? Might they represent a veneer, an aberration, a
misrepresentation, a spectre that may come to haunt us when real failures of
quality occur? And why, as marketers are we so concerned with
‘perceptions’? The commitment-trust model of relationship marketing
(Morgan and Hunt 1994) tells us that only the truth will do, while more
recent research (Berry 1999) implies the need for an almost spiritual
obligation to our customers that is transmitted through an adjunction, or
convergence, of mutually supporting values. The customer sees and hears
implied promises in every facet of a business and what we choose to make
overt helps build the trust that we desire - and the more ‘customer service’
we give them the more they believe in our blandishments, and the worse the
damage when they are let down.
Stephen Brown (1999) tells us that shopping - and let’s misinterpret this
(Brown 2000) as consuming - is a religious experience; our call centres, help
desks, and “hello, this is Susan” intimacy have become the craven
touchstones of devotion that their consumerist ardour demands. And so we
measure their impressions - their wonder, their awe, and their open-mouthed
incomprehensibility regarding the sheer audacity of the servicescapes (Bitner
1992) we arrange before them. Almost, through the use of devices that
gather ‘perceptions’ (e.g. SERVQUAL), we are gauging whether the gloss of
our accomplishments, or the veil of ‘customer service’ we have created to
populate them, is sufficiently opaque to divert their attention from the
potentially awful truth. How good, really, is the quality of the processes that
lay beneath, and how relevant to improving that quality are the
602 Tony Woodall

measurements we take?

Expectations, Needs and Requirements

Schneider and Bowen (1999) suggest that we all too frequently see customers
as consumers first and as people second. They observe that, “People strive to
satisfy core needs in life at a level more fundamental and compelling than meeting
their specific expectations as consumers” (p. 37), and identify security, justice
and self-esteem as primary need-oriented determinants of consumer delight
and outrage. Of course, the significant explanatory/influencing power of
needs (and of their close associates, values) has been recognized for many
years (for an early review see Clawson and Vinson 1978) and has always, in
fact, been at the heart of PBZ’s model of service quality (PBZ 1985).
What has never been made absolute, however, is what type of needs these
are. We are all familiar with Maslow’s hierarchical reading of the human
condition (Maslow 1954) and of its bipolar extremes labelled ‘physiological’
and ‘self-actualisation’. In marketing we can perhaps imagine consumers’
needs stretching similarly across a conceptual divide, from substantive (a
life-saving operation) at one end, to peripheral, marginal, unimportant - even
irrelevant - at the other. Somewhere along that continuum lies a point at
which we are able to relinquish our responsibility towards the customer and
begin to see him/her as an opportunity. At this point needs cross over and
become preferences, leanings, selections - any, or all of which that can be
chosen from the range of output we have, or are willing to make available.
The customer’s needs and requirements are dashed against the wall of
disinterestedness that represents our inability, or unwillingness, to deliver
what the customer requires.
So all the customer now has is his/her expectations, but not driven by
what should be available, instead determined entirely by what will be
available. The will-expectation overrides, absolutely, the should-expectation
(Rust, Keiningham, and Zahorik 1996). The theory then has it that providing
we can manage those expectations, then what we are able to provide will
always be good enough, and providing it fails within their ‘zone of tolerance’
(Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry 1993) all is well (Johnston and Heineke
1998).

What is Service Quality?

In their Satisfaction-Profit Chain, Anderson and Mittal (2000) use the simple
term ‘attribute performance’ to cover whatever it is that might lead to
satisfaction. This term combines both parsimony and ‘compresence’
(Holbrook 1999) to great effect and would, for any given application, cause
 Six Sigma and Service Quality 603

academics and practitioners alike to identify which attribute(s) was being

evaluated.
Whilst most researchers are at pains similarly to explain how ‘quality’
pertains to their particular view of ‘service quality’, few seem vexed by the
semantic scope of its companion, ‘service’, and this passes, often, without
either clarification or comment. Yet ‘service’ can, or could, mean any or all of
the following:-

1. The entire manifestation of a business/not-for-profit structure

perceived to reside within the service sector (e.g. restaurant,
insurance company, local council repair depot) - service as an
organisation.
2. The key commercial outputs of a service organisation (e.g. bank
account, insurance policy, holiday) - service as core product.
3. Any peripheral activity designed to enhance the delivery of a core
product (e.g. provision of a courtesy car, complimentary coffee) -
service as product augmentation.
4. Any product- or customer- oriented activity that takes place after the
point of delivery (monitoring, repair, up-dating) - service as product
support.
5. Service as a mode of behaviour (helping out, giving advice) - service
as an act.

Dependent upon the nature of the business, option 5 might materially

represent a mere fraction of option 1, yet performance in both contexts is
likely still to be represented by the term ‘service quality’. And, dependent
upon which of these options the researcher adopts will depend the extent to
which technical quality is acknowledged - and the extent to which a ‘real’
improvement factor is recognised or reported.

Conclusion

A recent call for papers from the European Institute for Advanced Studies in
Management (Lemmink 2000) suggested, “Although quality is still an important
management topic in the service industry recent developments show that the
management focus has shifted to innovations in services”. For some businesses
this is almost undoubtedly the case, but as a statement of suggested strategic
priority for service organizations with real market-leading aspirations this is,
at best, partial. The Lemmink vision discloses a marketer’s recognition of the
consumer’s demand for ever more, and unprecedented, service enhancement
and embellishment, but via its demi-marginalisation of service performance
it also abrogates the consumer’s seemingly paradoxical need for certainty
604 Tony Woodall

and predictability in the more critical areas of service provision.

As marketing’s odyssey enters a new era - where the beginning of a new
millennium and resurgent interest in perfect delivery (via Six Sigma)
coincide - the author suggests that marketers should - at least for a while -
shield their eyes from the alluring and circumjacent glare of the ready-
made/surrogate representation SERVQUAL, and concentrate rather on the
structuring of a refreshed, inclusive, and potentially more relevant model of
service quality.
Development of the new model should, without reasonably excluding or
diminishing characteristics relevant to other models, revisit the Gröonroos
original and evaluate/re-evaluate the need for:-

• a potentially enhanced role for ‘technical’ quality, reflecting the

concerns of a more demanding market and an explicit respect for
consumer’s needs and requirements;
• recognition of the separate, dichotomous, asymmetrical, and
disproportionately influencing roles of satisfaction and
dissatisfaction;
• recognition that evaluations of ‘reality’ will potentially have more
instrumental and explanatory value than measurements of
‘perception’;
• clear definition of object scope and domain, and stated relationship to
other associated components of the relevant product consumption
system.

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About the Author

Tony Woodall is a Senior Lecturer in Quality Management and Marketing at

the Nottingham Business School. He joined the Nottingham Trent
University some five years ago following a first career in corporate
management and consultancy. His primary research interests concern the
general relevance of quality and value to consumer behaviour and, more
recently, the specific impact of service failure and dissatisfaction.