The Service Quality Concept and a Method of Inquiry

Abstract

Presents a method for analysing statements (e.g. theories) about service quality. Uses a method, the Pentad, based on the work of the American literary and social critic Kenneth Burke′s work A Grammar of Motives . The Pentad′s five key terms Act, Agent, Scene, Agency and Purpose – which corresponds to five questions: What? Who? When and Where? How? Why? – are strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise, when one makes statements about what people do and why they are doing it. A central thesis of Burke′s is that the meaning of an act or event is based on the five key terms (on the answers to the five questions) in toto . If some of the key terms remain unspecified (i.e. the corresponding questions unanswered) the meaning of the event or action in question is correspondingly ambiguous. The method operates to assist (half‐formed) theories to become self‐conscious and articulate.