Service Quality and Library User Satisfaction Among Universities in Kenya
Abstract
Service quality and customer satisfaction are key concepts that organizations must
appreciate in order to remain competitive in any business environment. More importantly
is the need for organizations to understand and be able to measure these constructs from
the customer’s point of view to enable them better understand and satisfy their needs.
This study had three objectives: To determine library user expectations and perceptions
levels among universities in Kenya; to determine the levels of service quality in libraries
among universities in Kenya; to examine whether there exist any relationship between
service quality and library user satisfaction among universities in Kenya.
A Standardized questionnaire was developed from the SERVQUAL instrument derived
from the works of Parasuraman et al. (1988) and distributed to respondents from across
the universities in Kenya. Regression analysis was used to bring out the relationship
between these variables. From the analysis, it was established that service quality has a
statistically significant positive effect on user satisfaction represented by R2 (Coefficient
of determination) with a value of 73.9%. This in essence implies that service quality
accounts for 73.9% of library user satisfaction among universities in Kenya. The
findings further reveal that Reliability dimension contributes most towards user
satisfaction while Empathy dimension contributes the least. The results also indicate that
the libraries cannot afford to ignore any of these other dimensions since they all appear to
influence customer satisfaction although at different degrees.
This study contributes to the existing studies examining service quality and library user
satisfaction using the SERVQUAL model, and its empirical results could be helpful to
the library management in helping to bridge service quality gaps. The researcher
recommended that since this study focused only on university libraries in Kenya, future
studies could broaden the scope and look into more categories of libraries. Service quality
is also found to influence 73.9% of user satisfaction, meaning that the remaining 26.1%
was due to other factors. Future studies could also investigate the composition of this
other percentage (26.1%).
Citation
Kithome, Musyoka;2013.Service Quality And Library User Satisfaction Among Universities In Kenya.Publisher
University of Nairobi School of Business