The Precedents of University’s Parcel Service Quality Towards Student Satisfaction in a Higher Education Institution using SERVQUAL Model: A Conceptual Framework

Service quality is among the most crucial determinant for customer satisfaction in the parcel service industry. It consists of tangibility, reliability, assurance, empathy and responsiveness. However, there is lack of research and knowledge available on the customer satisfaction with the parcel service especially in higher education level. The purpose of the research is to develop a SERVQUAL framework on student satisfaction with University’s Parcel Service Quality in a higher education institution. Therefore, this paper can act as benchmark for parcel services to checklist their quality. Future researcher can use this research as the foundation and reference about the precedents of the university’s parcel service toward the customer/student satisfaction.


INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, logistics practitioners and academician are awared that customer service is becoming important in the industry (Anderson et al., 2011;Maltz & Maltz, 1998). One of the service sectors is parcel service and it has estimated to reach USD 500 billion in 2008 and continue to develop in future (Noordin et al., 2012). Thus, parcel service provider needs to improve their service to sustain the competitive advantages and increase customer satisfaction. In 1985, Parasuraman et al., state that the service quality is the assessment of a service provided by the firm and comparing the firm performance with the customer feedback in which is providing a benchmark on how the company should really perform. To boot, in order to maintain a good relationship with the customers, the company must have good parcel service efficiency. This is to ensure that consumers are happier with the quality they offer. Also, the consistency of the parcel service is very critical to ensure that the company retains its profitability and relationships with its customers (Cronin et al., 2000;Cronin and Taylor, 1994;Boulding et al., 1993;Binter, 1990). This is in line with Yi and Zeithaml (1990) pointed out that expectations and familiarity with service performance are two factors that affect customer satisfaction. Levesque and McDougall (1996) stated that satisfaction is the idea of customer attitude towards the service provider.
Logistics plays a very important role in this modern wide world where everything can be sent or received from one side of the earth to another side of the earth. Parcel service is one type the services in the logistics. For the parcel service company, customers are the direct recipients of the service provider. Thus, customer satisfaction has become an extremely important issue in term of the quality of service provided by the parcel service. However, there is scarcity of information available on customer satisfaction with the parcel service provider (Noordin et al., 2012). There are tonnes problems face by students from the parcel service such as such as lost mail, late delivery, parcel damaged and so on where it can categorize as mismanagement. The University's Parcel Service (UPS) whom fail to provide a proper service to their suppliers and consumer would cause profit loss and tarnished image (Froehlich, 1978). Therefore, student would no longer put their trust on the respective parcel service provider. Other than that, fail to provide proper service will directly hit on the customer satisfaction. According to the Hogan et al. (2002), the ability to manage and collect customer information is a strategy to maintain competitive advantage. However, it was found that the UPS fails to processed the arrived parcel as they can only operated during office hour and they also cannot provide information on the student parcel. Normally in the afternoon, when the students have their lunch break and no class, the staff UPS will have their lunch break as well. Therefore, this showed that UPS inefficiency making their services to be compromised. This is thoroughly explained in Tansakul et al. (2013) where it was stated that the reliability dimension is the capacity of the service provider to provide the promised services precisely and consistently.
Hence, mismanagement of the UPS creates an inefficiency and ineffectiveness in their services and thence become a hindrance for the university student to used their services. We are living in industry 4.0 where internet of things has become mainstream but still our UPS is still left behind with their obsolete conventional strategy. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to develop a SERVQUAL model of satisfaction of university students in the case Parcel Service Quality of the university. In this study four main variables of SERVQUAL model are chosen which are tangible, Assurance, Reliability and Responsiveness (Behdioğlu et al., 2019).

SERVQUAL
A company products or services are related to the level of customer satisfaction because it can represent long term competitiveness and the success of the company (Henning-Thurau & Klee, 1997). Thus, service quality has a strong consequence to the customer satisfaction. According to Boothe (1990), service quality can be compared by customers between service expectation and the actual service which becomes the only specific definition for service and thus service is evaluated by how good the service given to achieve customer expectation. Service quality also named as SERVQUAL scale and it divided into five dimensions which are reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, responsiveness (Behdioğlu et al., 2019;Parasuraman, 1985). The SERVQUAL scale has been applied widely in academics and practitioner's aspect across the industries through different countries (Ali and Raza, 2017;Wu and Ko, 2013). Based on previous study, empathy is indicated non-significant impact on customer satisfaction in parcel services (Yee & Daud, 2011). The parcel service quality is based on the SERVQUAL model that consist tangibility, assurance, reliability, empathy and responsiveness (Haming et al., 2019).

Tangible
The tangible aspects of the parcel service are a sign of the functionality, appearance and comfort of the physical environment to the customers easy to assess based on the external frames of references (Dagger & Sweeney, 2007). Hence, tangible is defined as the physical evidence of service that provided in the service quality. The physical actions have been taken for the customers in the service will involve tangible processes with tangible outcomes (Lovelock & Gummesson, 2004). Customer can hear, see, taste and smell when they receive the parcel or send something by using the parcel service. They can observe and be alerted of the physical outcome such as the duration of the freight transportation (Ahmad et al., 2019; Lovelock & Gummesson, 2004). Besides that, tangible elements of the parcel service are important to the new customers while for the loyal customer are concern for the professionalism and provider expertise (Kashif et al., 2015;Lai, 2015;Falk et al., 2010).
There are three areas usually measured in the tangible dimension which are the equipment, appearance of personnel and appearance of physical facilities (Haming et al., 2019;Tansakul et al., 2013). Equipment that are used in the parcel service such as handy bubble wrap, corrugated cardboard boxes, trucks and so on. For the physical facilities, it referred to the assets and operative mean such as outlets location and web site. Next, employees are referred to personnel who are put their effort in manage and carry on the logistics activities. Furthermore, personnel also can generate products. According to Bourlakis et al. (2011), availability also is one of the item variables of tangible dimension. The availability of the finer tangible elements is more attracted customer such as the bubble wrap had wrapped the fragile product when delivery to the customer (Ahmad et al., 2019;Haming et al., 2019;Lovelock & Gummesson, 2004). Availability is also occurred when some tools that facilitate to track the existence of products during the transportation process (Yee and Daud, 2011). Moreover, the accessibility also treated as an item variable of the tangible dimension. Accessibility is related with the convenience which can be a factor that influencing the formation of the performance expectation by customer. A convenience parcel company location means that customer can easily do the business with the parcel company (Jamal & Naser, 2002). Dimension of the tangibles in the SERVQUAL means the staff appearance, physical facilities for the location and the equipment's of the place (Haming et al., 2019;Cronin et al., 2000;Cronin and Taylor, 1992).

Assurance
The dimension of assurance is the aspect to address the customer's perceived privacy and security (Ahmad et al., 2019;Kassim & Abdullah, 2010). The extent of this dimension is to evaluate the courtesy and knowledge of employees and their skill to motivate customers confident and trust (Jun et al., 2004). Therefore, there are some factors that used in defined the service quality are security, courtesy, competence, credibility and it have combined to become the assurance (Saleh and Ryan, 1991). This is because according to Parasuraman et al. (1985), they have a high degree of correlation between each other. The measured scales contain in the assurance dimension including security, credibility, courtesy and employee's competency. (Johnston, 1995).
Trust is important to the parcel company because customer must purchase a service before experiencing it (Kassim & Abdullah, 2010). Therefore, according to the Parasuraman et al., (1985), trust also deliberation as the "trust in the service itself".
In the parcel service, these items are related to the issues such as consumer trust in parcel delivery, privacy and online transaction security (Haming et al., 2019;Ribbink et al., 2004). Therefore, security is important to the parcel service because it influenced customer trust level. Security is defined to the protection of information from illegal intrusion.
Besides that, online service has been identified by the previous study that lack of security (Haming et al., 2019;Kassim and Abdullah, 2010). In contrast, privacy is to protect the collected data during the interaction with the customer (Kassim and Asiah Abdullah, 2010). For the competency of employees, they can motivate the confident and trust toward the customers such as the delivery service, the employee is quick response to the request for delivery service and courtesy to reception of information (Parasuraman et al., 1991). According to Parasuraman et al. (1985), assurance defined that ability of employees to inspire trust and confidence and they have the knowledge and courtesy to the customers.

Reliability
According to the previous study, they have dispute that reliability is more important for the services compared to the goods because it can minimize the things gone wrong (Johnson and Nilsson, 2003). Thus, reliability is the ability of a system to keep the operating over time. It means that in the operation, reliability is highlighting the need to failsafe the existing processes and products (Johnson and Nilsson, 2003). Therefore, reliability also defined as the level to which the company's offering is reliable such as free from deficiencies and standardized (Fornell et al., 1996). Basically, customer expectation of the company to do is the fundamental service and free from deficiencies (Parasuraman et al., 1991).
Reliability is defined as the ability of the service provider to perform promised services precisely and dependability (Haming et al., 2019;Tansakul et al., 2013). According to Clegg et al. (2010), reliability dimension is explained about the relationship between time and service such as delivery on time to the customers, promising time delivery solving customer problems, delivery damage-free goods and doing right at the first time. In addition, reliability also involved the accurate order such as delivering what is order and accurate representation of the product (Parasuraman et al., 2005). Thus, when the service provider display reliability in their service toward the customer, the customer loyalty is existing (Haming et al., 2019;Parasuraman et al., 1991).
According to Huff et al. (1996), reliability is an important dimension that have related to the customer satisfaction with goods. In additional, Wolfinbarger and Gilly (2003) also found that reliability is the strongest interpreter of customer satisfaction and quality (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Reliability also shown by the aspect of the employee provided the service as the time as their promise and the record of the information keep properly (Cronin et al., 2000;Cronin and Taylor, 1992).

Responsiveness
Service features are one of the aspects of the transaction that mostly consider by the customer such as the responsiveness of the personnel (Saad and Conway, 2006). Thus, responsiveness dimension is measured by the speed of feedback such as provided prompt service and willingness to help customers with minimal waiting and queuing time (Haming et al., 2019;Tansakul et al., 2013). It means that, the personnel are giving help and quick response to the customers when the customers encounter question or problem (Parasuraman et al., 1985). In the parcel service, the personnel who are knowledgeable about the delivery service and the information of the parcel would be able to "respond" to customer questions and requests effectively. Hence it can argued be seen as a responsiveness item (Saad and Conway, 2006).
Customer is expecting the personnel address them in a timely manner and understand their needs and wants (Haming et al., 2019;Saad and Conway, 2006). Therefore, customer also expect high responsiveness from the on-time delivery service to receive the product (Lin, 2010).
Responsiveness also refers to the information retrieval and navigation speed that have provided to the customer. According to Lin (2010), responsiveness also is the scope to which a customer perceives the service provided by the personnel is helpful and responsiveness. The responsiveness means that provide prompt service and willingness to help customers (Parasuraman et al., 1985) Besides that, If the responsiveness of the firm is lower than customer expectation of the responsiveness that the high quality of the firm should have, then the firm would be assessed as low quality in the responsiveness (Asubonteng et al., 1996). Thus, quick response is one of the ways to retaining the customers to make sure that current customers won't become former customers. Therefore, using technology to learn more about customer needs and train the personnel will directly influence the responsiveness given to the customer. It is important to hold the suitable on-going training and programs on the difference attributes of responsiveness to enhance personnel's ability to improve customer service (Saad and Conway, 2006). If ignoring customer inquiries, it will directly increase customer dissatisfaction. Hence, responsiveness has a significant effect on customer satisfaction (Lin, 2010). The service delivery will affect the responsiveness of the customer. Besides, Phusavat and Kanchana (2008) showed the service flexibility is directly related and significant to the service delivery. According Cronin and Taylor (1992), the responsiveness is included the dimension of the exact service time by employee, willingness of help by the employee and fulfil the request by the customers. Hu et al. (2009) refer to customer satisfaction as "a cognitive or affective reaction that emerges in response to a single or prolonged set of service encounters". "Customer satisfaction can be defined in terms of meeting the expectations of the customers in terms of parameters associated with satisfaction" (Dost et al., 2017). Base on Fornell et al. (1996), the evaluation of the customer satisfaction is based on the consumption experience and total purchase had done over the time. Thus, satisfaction is an overall measure of how happy or content customers are in general with a product or service offering, taking a myriad of factors into consideration, beyond just product and service quality (Haming et al., 2019;Mahamad and Ramayah, 2010). Customer satisfaction has been studied and it determine by researcher which it can be measure by single item scale and multiple item scale. According Cronin & Taylor, (1992) means the satisfaction measure base on the customer's overall feeling towards a service. However, Parasuraman et al. (1985) means satisfaction measure by use multiple item scale which is using various dimensions for example the SERVQUAL dimensions (Haming et al., 2019).

Customer Satisfaction
Base on services quality theory, quality levels of services will be determined by customers or clients based on their expectation towards a firm. A company products or services are related to the level of customer satisfaction because it can represent long term competitiveness and the success of the company (Henning-Thurau and Klee, 1997). Service quality is bringing a strong and direct effect towards customer loyalty and satisfaction (Haming et al., 2019;Bowen & Chen, 2001;Brady & Cronin, 2001;Cronin et al., 2000;Cronin & Taylor, 1992;McKecnie et al., 2011;Parasuraman et al., 1985). For the judgement a product or service whether it gives the consumer a pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfilment which includes under or over fulfilment levels as satisfaction is known as the fulfilment respond of the consumer (Grigoroudis and Siskos, 2009). According to Parasuraman et al. (2005), customer loyalty will affect by the customer satisfaction at the same time influence the business profitability. The comparison between predicted and perceived service will be the "result" of the customer satisfaction however comparison between desired and perceived service as the "result" of services quality. Referring to the relationship between the product or service's objective characteristics, satisfaction can be said as the experience by the consumer (Klaus, 1985). Customers that are lost will be also be cost as it can cost more to gain new customer compare to keeping current customers. The competitive advantage can further attain by focusing customer satisfaction towards the product or services of the company. This also causes customers to stay loyal to the company as poor satisfaction leads the customers to switching companies (Aljaafreh et al., 2014).

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The Figure 1 shown in below is represented the theoretical framework of SERVQUAL Model that is adopted in the research. There have 4 dimension which are tangible, assurance, reliability and responsiveness as the independent variables while the dependent variable is the student's satisfaction.

CONCLUSION
The research also is to identify the problem occur in the parcel service which is influence to the student satisfaction. Besides, this research is to identify how the parcel services provide the quality of service based on management, process and delivery. Moreover, the problem occurs in the parcel service will be guideline for the UMK to improve their management process to increase the student satisfaction for the HEP parcel service. Due to that, we can conclude that our study is focus on the customer satisfaction toward the parcel service quality. Our research is related to logistic industries which is involved distribution of goods and services to the customers All in all, this study is important to examine the UPS toward student satisfaction. In addition, this research has become an instrument to the relevant practical and academician. This study can act as benchmark for UPS so that they can improve in the future in term of information, process, operational and their management of parcel when it reached to the students. Improving service quality can avoid any complaint or dissatisfaction among university students. Furthermore, improving service quality can make the process management become smooth and satisfied both parties.
Other than that, this Theoretical framework can also be used in another sector such as private sector or any logistics Tangible   Reliability   Assurance Customer Satisfaction Responsivenes s related services. Companies that provide or operate these services can improve their quality of services to fulfil the customer satisfaction through the research. This awareness can improve the company performance and management to sustain their competitive advantages. Besides, it also can increase business growth.
It is without a doubt that this study is not without limitation. First, this study does not cover all of the SERVQUAL variables which is empathy. Thus, this framework does not reflect a perfect SERVQUAL model. The variables empathy is not included as we assume that the empathy is a difficult variable in which we cannot control. Therefore, only those 4 variables which are Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and tangible are chosen as the most dominant factors in our theoretical framework. Other than that, this study can only be generalised towards service sector specifically logistics or courier services. Thence, it can be stated that it might not be suitable for another service sectors aside from logistics.
Future researcher can add up empathy as another variable or adding a moderator or mediator so that they can improve the model to a higher level. To boot, future research can use this research as the information and reference about the precedents of the university's parcel service toward the customer/ student satisfaction.