Effect of Service Quality Management Practices on Operational Performance of Petroleum Distributing Firms in Kenya
Abstract
The desire of any service organization is deliver quality service that meets their customer
expectations so as to remain profitable and in business. The service market has now
become more competitive than ever before and meeting customer needs is a necessity.
Petroleum distributing firms in Kenya are at a great task of perfecting their service
delivery systems to ensure that their customers get quality product at the right time, right
quantity and above all safely. Well managed service quality practices have the potential
of transforming the operational performance of an organization. The objectives of the
study were to determine the extent of adoption of service quality management practices
by petroleum distributing firms in Kenya, the challenges they face in the implementation
of these practices and the effect of these practices on the firms’ operational performance.
The study was carried out through a descriptive survey of 32 petroleum distributing firms
in Kenya. Questionnaires were used to collect primary data. The collected data was
analysed descriptive statistics while regression analysis technique was used to establish
the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The research findings
were presented in tables. The findings indicated that petroleum distributing firms adopted
various service quality management practices to a large extent. The findings also
indicated that lack of visionary leadership and top management support were the biggest
challenges the firms faced in their endeavour to implement service quality management
practices. Further, the relationship between the explored seven aspects of SQMP and
operational performance was found to be weak due to the fact that some control variables
like size of the firm and number of years in operation were not considered .The main
conclusion was that the adoption of service quality management practices by petroleum
distributing firms was inevitable. The researcher recommends that policy makers should
ensure organizations embrace service quality management practices for improved
productivity and better returns from their investments. The researcher concludes by
suggesting that similar research be carried out in other sectors of the economy and a
further study in the petroleum distributing firms that incorporate the control variables left
out in this study.
Citation
Degree Of Master Of Business Administration (MBA),2014Publisher
University of Nairobi