الفهرس 
Title : Service capacity strategies and their impact on perceived service quality
AbstractOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Managing the infeasible equilibrium between demand and capacity on the strategic level is one of the major challenges in service operations. This study aims to develop a framework of service capacity strategies that provide decision-makers with various long-term strategic options to manage the demand variability along with the consequences of such decisions on service delivery aspects. Besides, it seeks to demonstrate the impact of capacity strategies on perceived service quality and which aspect of service quality would be affected. Personally administrated questionnaires are conducted with 25 hospital department heads or their nominees (judgmental sampling) and with 274 patients (convenience sampling) from three central and public hospitals located in Giza governate. The findings of this research provide evidence that organization way to deal with capacity has a reflection on the perceived service quality. The lag capacity strategy is associated with a lower score of perceived service quality, higher expectation and lower experience. Meanwhile, the lead capacity strategy is associated with improved perceived service quality, lower expectation and higher experience scores. A deliberate decision on capacity strategy helps organizations manage the consequences of such a decision. If the organization chooses a lead strategy, it should be aware of the size of the lead capacity, the cost of keeping idle capacity and how to manage that extra capacity to its benefit. If the organization chooses a lag strategy, perceived service quality will suffer. Organizations must adopt a high level of tactical techniques to overcome crowdedness and decreased level of service quality. It is also crucial tomanaging this state with the service providers, not from a capacity point of view but the satisfaction perspective as well. The amount of discrepancies increases not only on the customer side but also on the internal staff