MRKT 4503 Week 3 Service Quality Gap Analysis Example

From a Homepage Promise to Failed First Road Tests: A Gaps Model Analysis of One Driving School Shortfall, Tracing the Customer Gap Back Through Four Provider Gaps and Ranking Which to Close First

Student Name

Walden University

MRKT 4503: Strategic Services Marketing

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

From a Homepage Promise to Failed First Road Tests: A Gaps Model Analysis of One Driving School Shortfall, Tracing the Customer Gap Back Through Four Provider Gaps and Ranking Which to Close First

The Model

Parasuraman et al. (1985) traced the distance between expected and perceived service, which they called the customer gap, to four shortfalls inside the firm. The first, the listening gap, opens when managers misjudge what buyers want. The second is the design and standards gap, between managers' beliefs and the service standards they set. The third is the performance gap, between those standards and the service actually delivered. The fourth is the communication gap, between the service delivered and what the firm promises. This paper applies the model to one shortfall at Steady Wheel Driving School and asks which gap a manager should close first.

The Customer Gap

Parents who buy Steady Wheel's six-lesson teen package expect their teenager to be ready for the road test when the package ends. The school's website tells families their teen will be ready for the test after six lessons. Last year, according to the school's records, 64 percent of teen-package learners who took the road test straight after the package passed on the first attempt, while the state's published first-attempt pass rate for all test takers in the area was about 70 percent. These figures are the case's own and illustrative. Parents whose teenagers failed experienced a clear gap: they had been promised readiness and paid for a package, and now faced a retest fee, another wait and a disappointed teenager.

Gap 1: Listening

The school's managers believed parents wanted a package that was quick and affordable and that any extra lessons would be seen as a reasonable add-on. The expectations brief showed something different: parents read the six-lesson promise as a commitment and have a narrow zone of tolerance on readiness. The managers' belief came from the school's early years, when most learners were adults, who expect to need varying amounts of practice. The listening gap is real, though moderate.

Gap 2: Design and Standards

The school has no standard for what "road-ready" means. Instructors decide informally whether a learner is ready, and there is no checklist of skills, such as parallel parking or merging, that a learner must show before the package ends. The six lessons follow a loose sequence, but an instructor can spend two lessons on parking with one learner and none with another. This is the widest gap, because without a standard the promise cannot be delivered consistently.

Gap 3: Performance

Instructors are paid by the lesson delivered, about $24 each, and are not paid for cancellations. They have an incentive to keep learners booking, and some reported that they hesitate to tell a parent their teen needs more lessons, since it feels like upselling. Others push learners through the package to avoid that conversation. The performance gap is partly a result of Gap 2: instructors cannot meet a standard that does not exist.

Gap 4: Communication

The homepage line promising readiness after six lessons is the clearest communication gap. It was written years ago by a former owner and never revised. The school's sign-up conversation repeats it. Neither mentions that many learners need one or two more lessons, or how the school decides.

Which Gap to Close First

The design and standards gap ranks first. A short road-ready checklist, written by the most experienced instructors and tied to the state road test's skills, would give instructors a common standard, give parents a clear picture of progress and make the communication gap easier to close honestly. The communication gap ranks second because it is the cheapest and fastest to close, but changing the promise alone would only lower expectations without improving delivery. Zeithaml et al. (2018) note that the provider gaps are interdependent, and this case shows why: closing Gap 4 first, without Gap 2, would make the school look less confident without making it better.

Table 1

Provider Gaps Ranked for Repair

Composite school. Rankings reflect the analysis in this paper.

What the Analysis Does Not Establish

The comparison with the state pass rate is rough, since the state figure includes learners who practiced far more than six hours. The analysis cannot show how many failures were caused by each gap. What it can show is that the school promised an outcome without a standard for delivering it, and that the standard is the place to start. Wirtz and Lovelock (2016) describe service standards as the bridge between what managers understand customers want and what employees actually do; Steady Wheel has the understanding now but not the bridge.

References

Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1985). A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research. Journal of Marketing, 49(4), 41-50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298504900403

Wirtz, J., & Lovelock, C. (2016). Services marketing: People, technology, strategy (8th ed.). World Scientific.

Zeithaml, V. A., Bitner, M. J., & Gremler, D. D. (2018). Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.