Measuring the perception discrepancy of the service quality between provider and customers in the Internet Protocol Television industry

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) operators have put managerial attention on managing the discrepancy in the perception of service quality between service providers and customers. However, there is still no solid model to estimate the perception discrepancy. This paper aims to (1) develop a model to measure the discrepancy in the perception of service quality between the service provider and customers and (2) identify the dimensions of assessing the service quality to help IPTV operators to assess the investment effectiveness on customer satisfaction. The model, developed by exploratory factor analysis of survey data from 771 respondents, suggests adopting system quality, information quality, service quality, video quality, and adaptive channel quality to measure the IPTV service quality. Using this measurement model, this study adopts the Kano model to explore the perception of service quality between service providers and consumers. The result indicates a significant discrepancy between these two parties, with only 16.6% of service quality items matching in the two-way quality model. Surprisingly, 42% of the service quality items have been identified as attractive by the service providers, but not attractive to customers at all. This finding is consistent with the social judgement theory, in which consumers, due to higher subjective perception, have higher selection criteria. In conclusion, the result suggests that the IPTV operators manage the investment ratio on services with different quality attributes in order to improve the investment effectiveness and thus maximise customer satisfaction.