Customer Perceptions of Community Information Centres in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The quality of products and services has become imperative to the day-to-day running of organisations. Services offered to customers need to be prompt and reliable to increase customer’s commitments to its utilisation and adoption. The primary objectives of the study were to determine how customers rate the quality of the service that they expect to get at Community Information Centres (CIC) in Zimbabwe and also to determine how customers rate the quality of the service that they are receiving. The study was premised on Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry’s (1985) Gaps model. Congruent to this model, the study used a quantitative research method. Five hypotheses related to tangibility, responsiveness, reliability, empathy and assurance of services were tested. Three Community Information Centres (CICs) were purposively sampled where a sample of 475 (N475) respondents were subjected to a SERVQUAL questionnaire. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. Descriptive statistics analysis was used to analyse the demographic variables of respondents and to evaluate service quality expectations and perceptions of CIC users. Inferential statistics were used to test relationships between the variables and to find confirmation for the hypotheses. Further, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to identify the relationships between independent (the SERVQUAL) dimensions and the dependant variable (service quality) and to test the hypotheses. Fit of data collected using the adapted SERVQUAL was realised and it was deemed a good instrument to measure service quality in CICs. The reliability values were above 0.8. Thus, it can be concluded that the measures used in the study are valid and reliable. Factor analysis was performed to assess convergent validity. Construct validity was determined by conducting Confirmatory Factor Analysis on all 22 items and the associated five SERVQUAL constructs, with AMOS V22 software. Findings from SEM confirmed significant positive relationships between the SERVQUAL quality constructs (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) and service quality dimension. Descriptive statistics results indicate that clients’ expectations of CICs services in almost all SERVQUAL constructs were higher than their actual experiences. Although the findings revealed some gaps between perception and expectation in all the five service quality dimensions, it can be concluded that there is a level of satisfaction among CIC users. The study will increase knowledge concerning customer expectations, something that will allow policy makers to effectively act upon the important and challenging task of running public service organisations such as CICs. The study recommends that service quality needs to be consistently evaluated to inform quality improvements.