Do socio-economic contextual factors influence SMEs' service quality? A cross-sector and cross-city SERVPERF analysis Online publication date: Tue, 03-Sep-2019
by Pedro Nascimento De Lima; Aline Dresch; Daniel Pacheco Lacerda
International Journal of Business Performance Management (IJBPM), Vol. 20, No. 3, 2019
Abstract: There is an increasing body of knowledge on service quality relationship with many contextual factors including culture, firm size and public vs. private settings. However, local socio-economic factors influence towards SMEs service quality is still unknown. We conducted statistical analyses to observe the relationship between contextual socio-economic factors of an SME's city and its service's quality performance using a SERVPERF survey database of more than 3,000 Brazilian SMEs. While service performance did not linearly correlate with the analysed socio-economic factors, a closer look at the data shows significant differences in service performance among groups of SMEs on highly developed and underdeveloped cities from the other cities. The paper discusses theoretical and managerial implications derived from these findings and proposes new research questions to generate data-backed knowledge to support SMEs service quality improvement.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Business Performance Management (IJBPM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook