| dc.description.abstract | In Kenya and world over, service quality is being used as a strategic tool to cut a competitive
edge in the market place. Banks, supermarkets, merchant ventures, hospitality industry, to
mention just a few, have widely used the service quality as a differentiation variable for
competitive advantage. In the utility industry, de-regularization and, therefore, competition has
dominated the marketing environment and service quality is therefore, a necessary evil.
The objectives of this study were to investigate the expectations and perceptions of different
categories of Kenya Power and Lighting company Limited (KPLC) customers and the
management's perspective of service quality following decentralization of services within a
restructuring program.
To achieve these objectives, samples of different categories of 306 customers were picked and
administered with . questionnaires that had both semi structured and likert matrix questions. The
customers were randomly and conveniently chosen from amongst those visiting KPLC offices
and others were visited in their premises.
The data collected was analysed using proportions, percentages, means, standard deviations and
coefficient of variation. Graphical displays were used to amplify the comparative analysis.
Analysis of data indicated that the expected service quality on all the ten dimension,s, used in the
study, is relatively high with a generally high level of agreement on their importance amongst all
the respondents. The received service quality is generally lower than the expected service
resulting in a relatively high service quality gap of about 18%. This service quality gap is fairly
similar amongst the different category of customers but reduces progressively from domestic,
small commercial towards the large commercial customers. KPLC management's performance
targets relating to service quality were found to have only covered a scope of about 40% within
the wide arena of all the service quality dimensions.
On the basis of the study, several recommendations were deemed appropriate for KPLC and the
utility industry at large, that is, to undertake: - enhancement of the use of marketing research and
customer survey studies, especially when undertaking customer service enhancement programs,
this will throw light to the customers' expectations of service and the perceived service quality,
and thus lead to effective programs in addressing'the areas of need; enhancement of commitment
to service quality; enhancement of empowerment of service personnel in close proximity to
customer service; and, enhancement of effective communication amongst organisations'
divisions of operations, human resources and marketing, research & development, e.t.c.
The major constraints and hence the limitations of the study was lack of discrimination of
customers' perceptions on the basis of income levels and education, factors which could affect
the results. Besides, the study relied on customers' judgments of perceptions, which are subject
to cognitive biases.
It was suggested that other areas of further study could be undertaken in order to address the
above limitations, especially on finding out: - whether there are significant differences in
expectations and perceptions with respect to classification of customers on the basis of incomes,
level of education and awareness; whether differences in the degree of need for electricity,
telephone and water services could reveal any significant differences in expectations and
perceptions; and also study the relevance of the postulates of the P-C-P model to the ten service
quality dimensions used in this study. | en |
