Services Marketing Quarterly

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Evaluating Consumer Perceptions of Government

Services Quality

Nese Nasif, Xiaojing Sheng & Joel Chilsen

To cite this article: Nese Nasif, Xiaojing Sheng & Joel Chilsen (2020): Evaluating
Consumer Perceptions of Government Services Quality, Services Marketing Quarterly, DOI:
10.1080/15332969.2020.1742981

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SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY
https://doi.org/10.1080/15332969.2020.1742981

Evaluating Consumer Perceptions of Government

Services Quality
Nese Nasifa, Xiaojing Shengb, and Joel Chilsena,c
a
Department of Marketing, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA;
b
Department of Marketing, University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, Texas, USA; cMayor,
City of Onalaska, Wisconsin, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Finding effective measures of service quality has been a mar- Public sector services;
keting research priority. This investigation proposes that con- government services;
sumers may evaluate government services quality on service quality; co-creation;
critical incidence technique;
dimensions not previously considered. Consequently, current narrative analysis
service quality assessment instruments may be insufficient in
a public sector services context. Based on prior theory, seven
distinguishing features of government service provision were
delineated. Emergent themes of public sector services evalua-
tions are evaluated. Findings include: (1) consumers consider
co-creation obligations substantially in service quality evalua-
tions; (2) dual roles of private consumer and public citizen are
both present in government services consumption. Practical
implications and future research are discussed.

Introduction
In the past sixty years, services marketing has evolved from an academic
campaign to differentiate services products and research from the then-
dominant logic of tangible goods, to what is now an established field with
its own well-respected publication outlets, research specialists, and courses
taught at every level of business education (e.g., Berry & Parasuraman,
1993; Fisk et al., 1993; Gronroos, 1978; Vargo & Lusch, 2004; Wright et al.,
1994). Throughout this time, researchers have identified, defined, classified,
and measured many aspects of consumer services (e.g., Cronin & Taylor,
1992; Lovelock, 1983; Parasuraman et al., 1988, 2005). However, a great
deal of the services marketing studies applied these conceptual models,
methodology frameworks, and instruments to study private provision of
consumer services. The academic literature in marketing that has focused
on public sector services has resulted primarily in conceptual developments
and has used geographical contexts mainly outside of the United States
where governments offer a greater array of services than in the United

CONTACT Nese Nasif [email protected] College of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin-La

Crosse, 1725 State Street, La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601, USA.
ß 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 N. NASIF ET AL.

States (e.g., Andaleeb et al., 2012; Butler & Collins, 1995; Cousins, 1990; Day
et al., 1998; Graham, 1994; Laing, 2003; O’Faircheallaigh et al., 1991; Van der
Hart, 1990).
Government services are services offered by a local, state, or federal govern-
ment entity either directly through public sector provision or indirectly
through public financing of private service provision. Examples of government
services offered directly by local, state, or federal governments in the United
States, which is the context for data collection in this research, include public
education, water supply management, and military protection. Examples of
government services offered indirectly through public financing of private
services include subsidies for healthcare, such as Medicare and Medicaid in
the United States, and financial aid for the costs of postsecondary education.
Government services have the characteristics of being taxpayer funded and,
relative to private goods, have a low degree of rivalry and exclusion.
A popular approach in measuring service quality has been through
the use of disconfirmation, which involves comparing a consumer’s
pre-purchase expectations and post-purchase perceptions of service quality
across the dimensions of tangible elements, reliability, responsiveness,
assurance, and empathy (Parasuraman et al., 1988). SERVQUAL, developed
by Parasuraman et al. (1988) has been useful in measuring service quality
across a variety of service industries through its assessment of these five
dimensions of service provision that consumers evaluate in making their
overall quality assessments. However, government services consumption
has some conceptually unique traits that differentiate it from the consump-
tion of private services. The current research proposes that, based on prior
theory, consumers may evaluate service quality for government provided
services on additional dimensions, and as such, the current popular
marketing instruments for measuring service quality, such as SERVQUAL,
may be insufficient in a government services context.
The following exploratory study will investigate the determinants
of customer service satisfaction and perceptions of quality in government
services. The next section presents the conceptual background, including
a brief review of the relevant literature on public sector services and service
quality measurement. The proceeding section describes the methodology of
the qualitative studies conducted in this research. The final sections present
the results, conclusion, and recommendations for future research.

Conceptual development
Government services
Unlike most private sector services, government service provision is
particularly diverse in the types of services it provides. However, like private
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 3

Table 1. Seven Distinguishing Features of Public Sector Services.

Feature Elaboration
Indirect payment for and subsidized costs to consumer Consumer does not pay the full cost for public sector
services consumption at the point of service
delivery. Costs are subsidized to the individual
consumer through the collective payments of
other taxpayers.
Noncompetitive Consumers do not have a choice, generally, of
different outlets for obtaining public
sector services.
Necessary consumption Consumption of a relatively high proportion of public
sector services is often necessary for survival or
mandated by law.
Moral universal provision Major function of government is to provide universal
provision of necessities in the face of private
sector underprovision or private sector
inaccessibility to all citizens.
Duality of consumer roles Consumption of public sector services involves
consuming them in dual roles as consumers and
as citizens.
Production determined by democratic processes Production of public sector services mainly
determined by the citizen role of the consumer
through voting and other democratic processes.
Primary customer is difficult to identify Users may not pay for service directly and/or may not
need to interact with a government organization
directly in order to use them.

sector services, marketing has the potential to improve the efficiency and
receptiveness of public sector services (Alford, 2002; Walsh, 1994) as well as
satisfaction from citizens and employees and the acceptability of the risks
involved for public sector service provision (Grigorescu, 2006; Smith &
Huntsman, 1997).
A review of the public sector services literature has revealed some
features in the process of consuming government services that differentiate
them from the consumption of private sector services. These differences,
as identified in the prior academic literature, are summarized in Table 1.
First, aside from certain fees, the consumer does not generally pay the full
cost for government services consumption at the point of service delivery,
but rather has paid for them indirectly and collectively through her and
other taxpayers’ tax dollars (e.g. Alford, 2002; Kelly, 2005). Moreover, the
nature of public sector financing is collectivist in that a central authority
(the government) has chosen how these tax dollars are allocated to the
various services provided by it. In other words, each citizen contributes
money through taxes to all government services, regardless of whether or
how much each citizen utilizes each service, and the full payment for
a particular utilized service has occurred prior to the service delivery and
at a price that was subsidized by other taxpayers who may or may not use
the service to the extent of the current user. Adding to the complexity
is that the individual production of government services may or may
not actually be endorsed by taxpayers at the individual level (Kelly, 2005;
Moore, 1994).
4 N. NASIF ET AL.

Second, with a few exceptions, consumers do not have many alternatives

for the consumption of services provided in the public sector. The context
of switching costs and availability of comparison products has been shown
to be a factor in consumer satisfaction research (Seiders et al., 2005).
Although private companies have emerged to compete with certain services
such as postal delivery, health care, local security, and educational services,
to name a few examples from the United States, a great deal of government
services are necessarily noncompetitive (e.g. Alford, 2002). For example,
consumers do not have a choice of different companies for obtaining a
driving license or a choice across different brands of professional nursing
certification. Thus, consumers do not have a choice of how to consume a
great deal of the services provided by the government.
Third, consumers also do not have a choice of whether to consume a
relatively high proportion of government services. For example, most
individuals find it necessary to gain income from employment, and thus,
have the necessity of obtaining a driving license or public transportation
services to commute to their jobs, obtaining a social security number so
that they are able to collect income from their jobs, and obtaining a birth
certificate so that they can obtain social security cards and other necessary
documents for securing employment. A more extreme example of lack of
choice in government service consumption is that of legal prisoners, who
are both legally and physically forced to consume public sector correctional
services (Alford, 2002). Certainly, private sector services also fulfill
consumer needs, such as groceries for food, telephone services for commu-
nication, and automobiles for transport. Also, some private sector services
may be mandated, for example through a consumer’s employer (e.g. Brown
et al., 2002). However, a relatively higher proportion of private sector
services also have the characteristic of fulfilling consumers’ wants rather
than needs, with the latter being defined as those services that are necessary
to exist physically and legally in a modern civilization. In contrast to
private services, a high proportion of government services are utilized out
of necessity.
Fourth, public sector services arise from the moral view that a main
function of government is to provide universal provision of private and
social necessities (e.g. Kelly, 2005; Smith & Huntsman, 1997) in the face of
private sector underprovision or private sector inaccessibility to all citizens.
Because many government products are public goods, they have the charac-
teristics of underprovision when production of them is left to the private
market (e.g. Andreoni, 1988) and being natural monopolies because
competitive production is prohibitively costly relative to monopolistic
production (e.g. Baumol, 1977). The most practical solution to solve
the potential underprovision of public goods is making their production
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 5

involuntary, in the form of governments imposing taxation to pay for

public goods production. However, in divergence from the traditional
economics rationale that public goods are characterized by nonrivalry and
nonexcludability, most services provided by current governments do not
have these features. Indeed, they are provided in the public sector because
of the popular moral view that certain services, such as individual health
care and subsidized housing, are universal human entitlements.
The fifth feature of public sector service provision is closely related to
the one just described. It involves the notion that government service con-
sumers are not merely consuming services for their own private value, but
they are consuming them in dual roles as consumers and as citizens
(Alford, 2002; Smith & Huntsman, 1997). Indeed, if public sector services
are provided in the public domain because they are considered essential
citizen services and/or beneficial to the common good, then the consumer
of them is consuming for both private and public value. As Alford (2002)
describes it, “the value delivered by government is ‘consumed’ both by citi-
zens (who receive public value) and by clients (who receive private value).”
Although the dual roles of private consumer and public citizen seem
to both be present in the consumption of government services, the sixth
element differentiating government services from the private sector, is that
their production seems to be mainly determined by the citizen role of the
consumer (Alford, 2002). Private goods and services, and even those in the
nonprofit sector, are produced as a result of such market factors as demand,
profitability, and actualization of innovativeness. However, government
products are determined by citizen voters who take into account the public
value of their production (Moore, 1994; Smith & Huntsman, 1997).
Finally, a seventh dimension of consuming government services is the
notion that the consuming customer is often difficult to identify (Graham,
1994; Van der Hart, 1990). In particular, if the service has a high degree of
nonexludability such as military defense, police protection services, clean
water provision, street repair, and waste management, just to name a few,
then the direct users, as opposed to common external beneficiaries, of the
services would necessarily be difficult to isolate. Indeed, many government
services are not paid for on a transaction basis and a citizen user may not
need to interact with a government organization directly in order to use
the service. As such, the direct value of certain public sector services,
in terms of their scope of citizen users, may be difficult to delineate.

Service quality assessment with SERVQUAL

In seminal research by Parasuraman et al. (1988), the authors develop
SERVQUAL, a widely-used instrument in academic research for measuring
6 N. NASIF ET AL.

consumer perceptions of service quality across its five dimensions of the

tangible elements of provision, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and
empathy. SERVQUAL has been useful in measuring service quality across a
diverse range of service industries such as, for example, clubs (Barnes,
Sheys, & Morris, 2005), grocers (Eastwood, Brooker, & Smith, 2005), hotels
(Gil, Hudson, & Quintana, 2006), internal marketing to employees (Lings
& Brooks, 1998), museums (Maher, Clark, & Motley, 2011), medical tour-
ism (Guiry & Vequist, 2011), and sports stadium concessions (Larson &
Steinman, 2009). However, just as SERVQUAL has received criticism for
its applicability, in general (e.g. Brown, Churchill, & Peter, 1993; Buttle,
1996; Cronin & Taylor, 1992; Teas, 1993), the validity of the instrument in
the public sector services context, specifically, has also been called into
question with mixed results (e.g. Donnelly et al., 1995; McFadyen et al.,
2001; Orwig, Pearson, & Cochran, 1997; Wisniewski & Donnelly, 1996).
Parasuraman et al. (1988) intended for SERVQUAL to be usable
across many types of service businesses as well as being suitable in seg-
menting a business’s clients according to quality perceptions and seg-
menting different stores according to their customers’ quality
evaluations. This certainly could apply to a government services context,
where consumers of a particular public sector service could assess its
quality according to the five dimensions of SERVQUAL. Moreover, cus-
tomer and store segmentation may also be desirable market data for
government services managers. It follows logically, thus, that the follow-
ing proposition can be integrated into the conceptual framework guid-
ing government services quality research.
Proposition 1: Government services can be evaluated appropriately according to the
five dimensions of tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy as
proposed in Parasuraman et al. (1988).

Government services, however, have certain distinguishing characteristics

that may contribute to other dimensions of evaluation in customers’ overall
evaluations of government service quality. Many of these distinguishing
characteristics are derived from the overarching point that government
services are offered by a central authority that is funded through collective
taxation and accountable indirectly to citizen oversight, composed of con-
sumers who gain private and public value through their consumption of
public sector services. It follows, then, that government service quality may
also be evaluated on dimensions that embody the unique characteristics of
government service provision and consumption.
Proposition 2: Government services can be evaluated appropriately according to
supplemental dimensions that take into account the characteristics of government
service provision and consumption which are largely distinct from private sector
service provision and consumption.
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 7

Methodology and data collection

The current research adapts the qualitative methodology of narrative ana-
lysis to assess service quality for government services. Written narratives
were elicited and collected using the framework of the critical incident
technique (CIT) and subsequently evaluated for the five dimensions of ser-
vice quality (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy)
described in Parasuraman et al. (1988). In addition, the CIT narratives
were coded for additional emerging themes that are unique to assessing
service quality in government services.

Critical incident technique

The CIT involves a collection of individually written, factual reports of explicit
incidents of actions that were “critical” in determining whether service out-
comes were positive or negative and whether any solutions undertaken were
effective or ineffective, including illuminating perceptions of “effective per-
formance” in various contexts (Flanagan, 1954). The technique has been used
to assess a variety of service contexts, including service quality and satisfaction
among many others (Gremler, 2004). The objective of CIT is to provide quali-
tative data for use in subsequent content analysis in order to uncover emer-
gent patterns or themes in the context of study (Bitner et al., 1990). As such,
generalizability was not the main focus of this pilot study, but rather, CIT was
used for the main objective of providing insight (Meuter et al., 2000) into the
phenomena of government service quality evaluations by consumers.
Data in the form of written narratives were gathered through an online
survey platform from a convenience and chain sample of consumers across
the United States, with anonymity and confidentiality assured for partici-
pants. Along with requests for brief background information on the
respondents, the following questions were asked in order to extract critical
incident narratives.

1. A “public sector service” is defined as any services offered by local,

state, or federal government either directly through public sector provi-
sion or indirectly through public financing of private service provision.
Please list a few examples of public sector services that come to mind.
2. Please describe at length and in detail your experience with using a
recent government service. The more detail you can provide, the better.
3. How would you describe the quality of both (1) the experience and (2)
the final outcome of the service you received? Again, please include any
details you want without censoring your emotions or language – it’s all
helpful for us!
4. Will you use this same service again? Why?
8 N. NASIF ET AL.

Table 2. Sample Characteristics.

Self-Chosen Public Sector Service Context for Narrative
Age
Average 34
Median 32 public education 18
Range 19-69 law enforcement and public safety 17
Gender Identity postal services 15
Female 71 (66%) driving and vehicular services 11
Male 37 (34%) public transportation 8
Citizenship residential services 7
U.S.A. 103 (94%) public housing and financial assistance 7
Mexico 5 (5%) arts, culture, and media 5
Spain 1 (1%) elections and voting services 4
Residence tax collection 4
U.S.A. 109 (100%) other government services 16

The first question was intended to isolate examples of government services

in respondents’ minds. The rest were intended to elicit critical incident
narratives. Informants were told that they were not given a word limit, and
they were encouraged in the instructions to write as much detail as possible
of their incidents. Narratives of incidents were solicited from residents
in two different U.S. geographical regions. The survey instructions asked
respondents to pick a pseudonym to designate their survey and were assured
of confidentiality of their participation. At the conclusion of sampling,
there were 109 total surveys collected. Out of these, five were excluded from
subsequent narrative analysis, four of them because their content each focused
on a private sector service, rather than a government service, and one because
the writing was nonsensical to two different raters. The average respondent-
generated word length of the narratives was 507 words, with a median length
of 538 words. Table 2 summarizes other sample characteristics.
Although CIT results do not necessarily entail any subsequent quantitative
measurements (Meuter et al., 2000), the results of the narrative analysis,
which will be discussed in the next section, imply that current popular
marketing instruments, such as SERVQUAL, may be insufficient
in assessing the entirety of the factors that comprise public sector service
quality for consumers.

Narrative analysis
Narrative analysis uses produced stories as the unit of analysis in research
to understand the way people create meaning out of experiences
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). As such, the accuracy of the facts in the
narratives in a positivistic approach are not of primary concern, but rather,
the researcher is interested in the social, personal, and contextual
perspectives that frame the narratives. Narratives can be viewed as stories
that contain both facts and contextualized personal interpretations (Arnold
& Fischer, 1994). Under narrative analysis, the content of the narratives
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 9

Table 3. Emergent Themes Aligned with SERVQUAL Dimensions.

Representative Excerpts (service context
SERVQUAL Dimension Definition in parentheses)
Tangibles physical facilities, equipment, and “ … the place was filthy and gross.” (drivers
appearance of personnel licensing)
“The lady at the front was chewing gum … ”
(water provision)
“ … smaller class sizes … ” (public schools)
“ … the machines in which you purchase your
tickets are pretty easy to use and they give
you different options, like buying a ticket for
a day, month, or a year.” (public
transportation)
“The Department of Public Safety I went to
would be more efficient if the facility was
bigger along with a larger parking lot.”
(drivers licensing)
“There are not enough bus stops and the ones
that are available do not even have a bench
to sit on or even shade to stand under,
which is ridiculous since we live in a place
where 100þ degree weather is a common.”
(public transportation)
Reliability ability to perform the promised “I was happy with the privacy and security of
service dependably the voting process.” (public elections)
and accurately “They have a regular schedule and none of it
spills out.” (trash collection)
“I am safe and sound.” (military)
“In the end, the packages I’ve received have
always arrived in good condition, so in the
end they do get their job done.” (postal
services)
“As long as the bus drivers get the job done
and keep their passengers safe there isn’t
much more they can do to improve public
transportation.” (public transportation)
Responsiveness willingness to help customers and “They came within just a few minutes even
provide prompt service though it was in the middle of the night.”
(fire protection)
“Employees are … somewhat helpful.” (drivers
licensing)
“ … her superior was difficult to work with as
well, and all I really wanted was to pay my
bill in a reasonable amount of time (not 2þ
hours later).” (water provision)
“My time did not seem valuable to them and
they did not seem to care to speed up any
processes for anyone.” (drivers licensing)
“The quality of the service was quite horrible
experience wise, answers were never direct
and included many transferred calls until
someone was able to answer my questions.”
(public health insurance)
Assurance knowledge and courtesy of “She tried to tell me I had the wrong form so I
employees and their ability to had to convince her I didn’t.” (drivers
inspire trust and confidence licensing)
“ … even after they told me that information, I
was doubtful whether I could use that
‘receipt’ as a proof.” (passport services at post
office)
“ … well-researched, knowledgeable staff … ”
(public museums)
(continued)
10 N. NASIF ET AL.

Table 3. Continued.
Representative Excerpts (service context
SERVQUAL Dimension Definition in parentheses)
Empathy caring, individualized attention the “ … they listened to what I want, guided me to
firm provides its customers choose what is better fitting my needs and
helped me process posting letters and
documents to my friends.” (postal services)
“They remember my name which is nice.”
(public libraries)
“I feel that they understand if I’m angry or if
I’m in a good mood and know how to
respond depending on which mood I’m in.”
(postal services)

are subjected to systematic interpretation, of which there are several inter-

disciplinary qualitative methods, of the facts and personal interpreta-
tions therein.
In the current study, the CIT narratives underwent open, axial, and
selective coding by two separate raters using the coding processes described
in Strauss and Corbin (1998). In open coding, labels were attached to the
concepts in the narrative text, and from these, categories of concepts were
defined and developed. In axial coding, the narratives were reexamined
under the guidelines of identifying unique and relational contexts, identify-
ing actions and consequences associated with the critical incidents, relating
the various categories from the open coding process, and identifying poten-
tial major categories as overarching themes linking several of the narratives.
Finally, in selective coding, the core categories of citizenship and service
co-creation obligations that emerged in the preceding analyses were related
to other emergent themes.

Results
Riessman (1993) warns that the narrative analyst should “avoid the
tendency to read a narrative simply for content, and the equally dangerous
tendency to read it as evidence for prior theory” (p. 61). Rather, narratives
should serve as explanations that are highly contextualized to the situation
of its author and her external and personal circumstances (Arnold &
Fischer, 1994). Nevertheless, the emergent themes in the narratives
must necessarily be related to the dimensions of SERVQUAL, or a lack
of relatedness must be shown, in order to corroborate or repute the first
proposition. Parasuraman et al. (1988) assert that SERVQUAL may be used
to assess service quality, generally, and so the first proposition maintains
that the five dimensions of SERVQUAL are present in consumers’
evaluations of government services. Indeed, in the reduction of preliminary
coding, all five of these dimensions emerged in part or in whole in
the critical incidents, providing support for Proposition 1. Table 3 provides
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 11

a list of the five SERVQUAL dimensions, their descriptive definitions from

Parasuraman et al. (1988), and selected quotations from the narratives that
are representative of the dimension.
The initial open coding process in the current research was conducted
with, in part, an objective to determine the SERVQUAL and potentially
other assessments that were used in evaluations of service quality by
government services users. Indeed, the conceptual work on public sector
services, as described above, suggested Proposition 2—that there
would be additional dimensions that comprised an overarching theme
of “citizenship”, across which some government services contained in the
critical incident narratives were uniquely evaluated. Such themes did
emerge, but in line with grounded theory as well as narrative analysis
methodology, which maintains that data from narratives undergo a process
of analytical induction “which causes questions to change and new ones to
emerge” (Riessman, 1993, p. 60), selective coding revealed that asserting
“citizenship” dimensions, as such, no longer seemed to be sufficient
to a holistic view of government services quality evaluation. Certainly,
the narratives did contain evidence of government services evaluation
that were aligned with the seven distinguishing features discussed earlier.
Table 4 provides examples of each feature represented in the data.
However, selective coding seemed to reveal a stronger main theme in the
data than the conjectured citizenship dimensions that were derived from
prior theory. Notably, the narratives seemed to reveal more fundamental
emergent themes of co-creation of public services, that of co-creation and
obligations for co-creation of government provided service outcomes that
influence quality of consumption for the primary consumer (the narrator),
the consumer’s community (local, national, and global), and the service
provider (the government). Certainly, the private consumer’s concerns for
tangible elements, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy were
certainly present in their evaluations of the quality of public services they
received. However, there also seemed to be a strong consideration of their
own responsibilities in the service creation, as well as the responsibilities
of the government service providers and other citizens who consumed the
services in tandem.
The narratives seemed to share a tacit understanding that public sector
service consumption was not of a uni-directional nature with the provider
simply receiving and evaluating value from it. Rather, consumers of
government services seemed to acknowledge that they and other customers
have roles in co-creating the quality of the government services that they
choose to or are mandated to consume. For instance, consumers of public
education describe how the education levels and incomes of their children’s
classmates affect the quality of education that their children receive.
12 N. NASIF ET AL.

Table 4. Examples of Seven Distinguishing Features of Public Sector Services.

Representative Excerpts (service
Feature context in parentheses)
Indirect payment for and subsidized costs to consumer “Since the library (city) buys them then all of Avon’s
residents can share them.” (public libraries)
Noncompetitive “Just because we have nowhere else to go for a
license we have to put up with it.” (drivers
licensing)
“It is the only one for 80 miles.” (drivers licensing)
Necessary consumption “I think that I have no choice to use it.” (passport
services at post office)
“Because my driver’s license and ID is necessary to
have, it would be impossible not to use the
service that the Department of Public Safety offers.
Due to the fact that drivers’ licenses expire and
updating them is required, most people have to
visit this service every few years. If it were by
choice, I would never visit this facility.”
(drivers licensing)
Moral universal provision “I believe that water supplies is of crucial importance
to any country so it is always monitored and
management by the government.”
(water provision)
Duality of consumer roles “I live in a red state and so I think it’s important for
democrats to vote.” (public elections)
Production determined by democratic processes “That would take more tax money and I’d rather it be
spent on schools.” (public libraries)
“I felt as if the staff was limited by ordinances and
laws in regards to going above and beyond for
the well being of these animals.” (animal care
services division of police)
Primary customer is difficult to identify “The whole point is that they are defending
everyone’s freedom without even knowing
us.” (military)

Those consumers who obtain drivers licenses speak extensively of how the
behaviors of others present at service delivery affect their service quality.
Citizens who voted in recent presidential elections seem to acknowledge a
responsibility to wait in lines to create the minimal private value of an
individual vote and display “I voted” stickers publicly afterwards. Table 5
displays more examples where perceived co-creation roles and obligations
were indicated in narratives of critical incidents.
This alternative framework of considering public sector services quality
evaluation from the perspective of stakeholder roles and obligations in co-
creation is different, but not completely distinctive, from the other two sug-
gested frameworks of the SERVQUAL dimensions and the supplementary
citizenship factors. Certainly, there are differences. Most notably, the items
measuring SERVQUAL, as well as other popular measures of service qual-
ity such as SERVPERF (Cronin & Taylor, 1992), seem to consider the con-
sumer as seeking private value only. Moreover, they assert that the
perspective of the consumer is that of a demander of services, rather than a
partial supplier that co-creates the value that generates the final outcome of
quality service provision. As such, these popular instruments do not
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 13

Table 5. Perceived Roles and Obligations of Participants in Public Sector Service Co-creation.
Co-creation Roles and Obligations of … Representative Excerpts (service context in parentheses)
… the service provider (government) “They’re not very clear about what paperwork you need to bring.”
(drivers licensing)
“Our suburb is fairly well funded so I expected it to have a nice
library.” (public libraries)
“Her English teacher could put more effort into grading and
actually wanting the kids to learn, instead of just assigning
assignments just to fit a mandated curriculum.” (public schools)
“We are blessed to live in a country where families of dedicated
military careermen are taken care of in exchange for patriotic
service.” (military)
“Since it was a public service that was created in order to help
those that are in need I thought that the service that I would
be receiving was going to be excellent, with people that cared
about what do my family and I need public housing, and of
course willing to help us.” (public housing)
“They may also want to upgrade their technology because they
aren’t working with just people who could afford their services
but now most of the country since it has now become more
affordable with the assistance of the government.” (public
health insurance)
… the primary consumer “It’s important for educated people to vote.” (public elections)
“We wait until the specified day to put out the big trash items.”
(trash collection)
“We try to stay fairly involved with our kids teachers. We
communicate through the schools online grading and
communicating softwares and we also attend games, parent-
teacher meetings, and special events.” (public schools)
“My husband provided dedicated and patriotic service to the
Marines for his entire life for a moderate salary.” (military)
… other consumers “We wanted our children to go to school with children from good
families so we moved to a higher income city.” (public schools)
“I think you should know English in order to vote for a U.S.
president.” (public elections)
“My annoyance on this issue is not with the trash collectors but
with my neighbors … who leave junk on their lawn for weeks
instead of just bringing them out on big item trash day.” (trash
collection)
“ … some required service like other countries have.” (military)
“Many people that had the opportunity of live in those houses
don’t really need it or they get comfy living there and they
never start looking for an actual house while giving the
opportunity to others of lived in there.” (public housing)

consider the factors of co-creation, and moreover, the perceived roles and
obligations of the main consumer, other consumers, and the service pro-
vider in co-producing a service product. Indeed, since the data has shown
significant consideration of these perceived roles and obligations in
respondents’ evaluations of critical service incidents, it seems likely that
they factor into consumers’ perceived expectations (importance), perceived
outcomes, and subsequent calculations of disconfirmation.
However, the divergent frameworks in this paper seem to be related, as
well. The data has already indicated that the SERVQUAL dimensions cover,
in part, evaluations of service quality in government. In addition, the citi-
zenship themes, derived from prior theory, cover several aspects where
public sector services differ from private sector services. These themes are
14 N. NASIF ET AL.

ancillary to the SERVQUAL dimensions but also seem to be related to

them. For instance, consumption of noncompetitive services seems to play
a role in producing the expectations of (low quality) tangibles, reliability,
responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Similarly, the dual roles of private
and citizen consumer seem to contribute toward a sort of tolerance for lower
expectations in these dimensions, especially in a public sector service where
the citizen role is prominent. For example, in the narratives about public elec-
tion voting incidents, respondents expressed a desire for shorter wait times,
but also seemed to accept that long lines and crowded parking lots were
adequate and expected for this sort of service. Ultimately, it seems that the
perspective of services as co-creation obligations of the primary consumer,
the government service provider, and other consumers tap into whole enter-
prise of public sector service consumption and encompass many, if not all, of
its distinguishing features. For instance, using the prior example of voting,
the citizen’s perceived obligation in co-creating a vote for a public official
may be to tolerate some lines and crowds, while other citizens have the obli-
gation of achieving standards that are perceived by the main consumer as
appropriate for the particular service, such as also voting and speaking the
majority language, as indicated in one narrative. In turn, the government’s
obligation is to provide a safe and secure voting process and facility.

Conclusion
In the continued evolution of services marketing research, it is requisite to
explore further public sector services as both a unique dimension of overall
human service provision as well as an overarching subject area with its own
unique contexts and untapped areas of research within it. As such, this con-
ceptual and qualitative inquiry has taken a step down this path by suggesting
an area of inquiry for public sector services, service quality assessment, as
well as a framework that is integrated in the established paradigm of qualita-
tive and quantitative inquiry for marketing services research.
The current research has provided evidence for the proposition that gov-
ernment services are likely appropriately tested using SERVQUAL, but
there is theoretical evidence that government services may also be evaluated
in the minds of consumers across addition dimensions that are unique to
their public sector context. Specifically, prior research has been used to
support the proposition that government services may be evaluated appro-
priately according to additional dimensions that consider the unique fea-
tures that distinguish them from private sector service provision and seem
to emphasize a citizenship identity of the consumer. An implication of this
finding for future research is that any instrument measuring these dimen-
sions may need to take into account public sector service consumers’ dual
 SERVICES MARKETING QUARTERLY 15

roles of consumers of private value and public welfare, beliefs in govern-

ment’s role to provide universal access to certain services, belief in the
accountability of government to its citizenship, obligatory consumption of
legally mandated services, and payment for services through the indirect
vehicle of taxation. Moreover, the qualitative data has revealed that con-
sumers consider co-creation obligations substantially in their evaluations of
government services quality. Current marketing instruments measuring ser-
vice quality take into account service provision in a uni-directional manner,
in that the service created by the provider is the sole outcome that is
assessed in quality evaluation. Rather, the findings in the current research
suggest that the co-creation outcomes and processes of the main consumer,
other consumers, as well as the service provider factor into a final evalu-
ation of service quality.
The implications for managerial research include the possibility that the
existing popular instruments for evaluating service quality (SERVQUAL as
the prominent current example) may be insufficient for evaluating all of its
dimensions in the public sector context. While there are anecdotal accounts
from consumers regarding government employees having low incentives to
provide high quality service, possibly due to government services’ specific
traits of providing necessary and noncompetitive products, this is likely not
the case. For instance, quality service provision is necessary for effectiveness
and operating efficiency in the private sector (e.g., Athanassopoulos, 1997).
It is possible that further research regarding this link is needed for public
sector services contexts but, if corroborated, would have the implication
that public sector managers also require quality service provision for effect-
ive and efficient service provision. As such, future research toward creating
a valid and reliable instrument to accomplish this is necessary to suffi-
ciently evaluate quality in a public sector service context.

Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Samantha Fitzsenry and Danielle Jemison for research assist-
ance. They also appreciate the invaluable feedback given on prior drafts of this research
from Charles Martin, attendees at the Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and
Complaining Behavior biennial conference, and attendees at the Society for Marketing
Advances annual conference.

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