Motivation

In the service industry success often favours those who deliver higher performances and value in the eyes of their partners and/or end-customers. The performance of the delivered service, however, may not always meet the expectations of the buyer, or the service quality may be evaluated differently by the supply chain partners, leading to a performance shortfall in both cases.

A perception gap refers to the differences in perception among the stakeholders regarding any aspect of the supply chain relationship. But how are such gaps associated with the performance of service supply chains and any resultant performance gaps? How can service supply chain partners identify, quantify, and eliminate the perception gaps? As a unique contribution to the literature, this study is the first to answer above questions by offering a novel integrative framework that provides the specific steps on how to compute the perception gaps and performance gaps, along with the associations between them.