Services marketing and management refers to a customer satisfaction engineering tool that deals with various complex issues like design, delivery, encounters, quality, profitability and productivity. Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy given needs. The eight principal Quality dimensions comprise Performance, Features, Reliability, Conformance, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics and Perceived Quality. This paper deals with the challenge of service quality in today’s emerging global village. It is based on doctoral level research work related to five services, namely, banking, airlines, education, fast food restaurants, and mobile telecommunication. The study employed the modified version of the SERVQUAL instrument to ascertain the quality gaps in the service industry for the five services. The selection of these services stems from the fact that the Indian economy is fast responding to the LPG syndrome. The cultural divide is fast melting and the service industry has been rocked by fast paced technological advancements. These industries, in particular, have been facing stiff competition from transnational corporations where innovation and customer delight are the order of the day. This paper endeavors to assess the consumer psyche in order to compile the existing gaps and to suggest strategies to alleviate such quality gaps.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) defines Quality as “the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy given needs”. The eight principal Quality dimensions comprise Performance, Features, Reliability, Conformance, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics and Perceived Quality.

Service is “any act or performance that one party offers to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product” (Balaji, 2002). Services Marketing refers to “a customersatisfaction- engineering tool whereby various issues like buying and selling of services, knowledge, skill of provider and supplier, the style of offering the services, the designing of product mix, the framing of pricing and promotional strategies and formulation of overall marketing strategies on the basis of informative and intuitive decisions with the help of sound information system, are analyzed and implemented”. In services, the distinguishing features that determine quality differ from manufacturing. The most important dimensions of service quality include Time, Timeliness, Completeness, Courtesy, Consistency, Accessibility, Accuracy and Responsiveness.