Measuring The Service Quality Of Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations

Agriculture sector is the third engine of growth for the Malaysian economy. The government has recognized agriculture sector as a valuable prospect that must be explored. Within the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry, the agriculture sector has been restructured in particular to improve...

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Main Author:	Abd. Halid, Mohammed Rizal
Format:	Thesis
Language:	English English
Published:	2007
Subjects:	Agricultural cooperative credit associations - Customer services - Selangor - Case studies
Online Access:	http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/5499/1/FP_2007_22.pdf
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id	my-upm-ir.5499
record_format	uketd_dc
institution	Universiti Putra Malaysia
collection	PSAS Institutional Repository
language	English English
topic	Agricultural cooperative credit associations - Customer services - Selangor - Case studies
spellingShingle	Agricultural cooperative credit associations - Customer services - Selangor - Case studies Abd. Halid, Mohammed Rizal Measuring The Service Quality Of Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations
description	Agriculture sector is the third engine of growth for the Malaysian economy. The government has recognized agriculture sector as a valuable prospect that must be explored. Within the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry, the agriculture sector has been restructured in particular to improve its service quality. The objective of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the services provided by the Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations (AFOs) under the Farmers Organisation Authority (FOA) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry to their members Farmers, under the Farmers’ Organisations of the FOA have certain expectations about the services they received. These expectations are beliefs about the upcoming services, which when compared with the perceived actual service delivered will influence the level of satisfaction of farmers and the judgment of AFOs and FOA’s overall service quality. The most popular measure of service quality, the SERVQUAL was used in this study to evaluate the quality of service provided in terms of what farmers expect and what they actually received. The SERVQUAL consists of five dimensions of service quality namely tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. A pair of 22-item likert scale questions were used in this study to measure the levels of expectation and perception of farmers. An analysis covering 104 farmers of Selangor area farmers’ associations were selected as respondents. Frequency counts and percentages were used to analyse the demographic traits of the respondents. Gap Analysis was used to identify the differences between farmers’ expectations and perceptions. Factor analysis was used to determine the underlying patterns of the statements made in the 22-items of the SERVQUAL instrument and a logistic regression analysis was conducted to further examine the relationship among those underlying patterns. This study revealed that there was an overall service quality gap between expectations and perceptions of -0.6306. The responsiveness dimension represented the lowest score (-0.6899) on the SERVQUAL scale, followed by tangibles (-0.6779), reliability (-0.6500), assurance (-0.5697) and empathy (-0.5654). Results of the factor analysis show that three factors had eigenvalue greater than 1.0. These three factors were work ethics (11.812), customer care (1.036) and appearance (1.008). Results of the logistic regression analysis show the odds ratio of those three factors reveals that when holding all other independent variables constant, for each one-point increase on the five-point work ethics, customer care and appearance scale, there is a 7.880, 7.909 and 6.382 times more likely that members of the Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisation will be satisfied with the quality of services provided respectively. Results from the gap analysis can provide important information for the FOA to plan and develop more programs for improving the quality of services delivered by the FO’s to the farmers. With such programs, it would help to improve service quality of AFOs so that the gap between expectations and perceptions among the farmers can be narrowed. Meanwhile, results obtained in the factor analysis and logistic regression provided an extra data and information to the Area Farmers’ Organisations in Selangor by revealing the unseen factors that could be useful to them. The analysis founded that, factors such as work ethics, customer care and appearance are significant to service quality. FOA should applied these factors as an indicator to enhance the service quality.
format	Thesis
qualification_level	Master's degree
author	Abd. Halid, Mohammed Rizal
author_facet	Abd. Halid, Mohammed Rizal
author_sort	Abd. Halid, Mohammed Rizal
title	Measuring The Service Quality Of Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations
title_short	Measuring The Service Quality Of Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations
title_full	Measuring The Service Quality Of Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations
title_fullStr	Measuring The Service Quality Of Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations
title_full_unstemmed	Measuring The Service Quality Of Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations
title_sort	measuring the service quality of selangor area farmers’ organisations
granting_institution	Universiti Putra Malaysia
granting_department	Faculty Agriculture
publishDate	2007
url	http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/5499/1/FP_2007_22.pdf
_version_	1747810437909446656
spelling	my-upm-ir.54992013-05-27T07:23:16Z Measuring The Service Quality Of Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations 2007 Abd. Halid, Mohammed Rizal Agriculture sector is the third engine of growth for the Malaysian economy. The government has recognized agriculture sector as a valuable prospect that must be explored. Within the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry, the agriculture sector has been restructured in particular to improve its service quality. The objective of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the services provided by the Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations (AFOs) under the Farmers Organisation Authority (FOA) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry to their members Farmers, under the Farmers’ Organisations of the FOA have certain expectations about the services they received. These expectations are beliefs about the upcoming services, which when compared with the perceived actual service delivered will influence the level of satisfaction of farmers and the judgment of AFOs and FOA’s overall service quality. The most popular measure of service quality, the SERVQUAL was used in this study to evaluate the quality of service provided in terms of what farmers expect and what they actually received. The SERVQUAL consists of five dimensions of service quality namely tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. A pair of 22-item likert scale questions were used in this study to measure the levels of expectation and perception of farmers. An analysis covering 104 farmers of Selangor area farmers’ associations were selected as respondents. Frequency counts and percentages were used to analyse the demographic traits of the respondents. Gap Analysis was used to identify the differences between farmers’ expectations and perceptions. Factor analysis was used to determine the underlying patterns of the statements made in the 22-items of the SERVQUAL instrument and a logistic regression analysis was conducted to further examine the relationship among those underlying patterns. This study revealed that there was an overall service quality gap between expectations and perceptions of -0.6306. The responsiveness dimension represented the lowest score (-0.6899) on the SERVQUAL scale, followed by tangibles (-0.6779), reliability (-0.6500), assurance (-0.5697) and empathy (-0.5654). Results of the factor analysis show that three factors had eigenvalue greater than 1.0. These three factors were work ethics (11.812), customer care (1.036) and appearance (1.008). Results of the logistic regression analysis show the odds ratio of those three factors reveals that when holding all other independent variables constant, for each one-point increase on the five-point work ethics, customer care and appearance scale, there is a 7.880, 7.909 and 6.382 times more likely that members of the Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisation will be satisfied with the quality of services provided respectively. Results from the gap analysis can provide important information for the FOA to plan and develop more programs for improving the quality of services delivered by the FO’s to the farmers. With such programs, it would help to improve service quality of AFOs so that the gap between expectations and perceptions among the farmers can be narrowed. Meanwhile, results obtained in the factor analysis and logistic regression provided an extra data and information to the Area Farmers’ Organisations in Selangor by revealing the unseen factors that could be useful to them. The analysis founded that, factors such as work ethics, customer care and appearance are significant to service quality. FOA should applied these factors as an indicator to enhance the service quality. Agricultural cooperative credit associations - Customer services - Selangor - Case studies 2007 Thesis http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/5499/ http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/5499/1/FP_2007_22.pdf application/pdf en public masters Universiti Putra Malaysia Agricultural cooperative credit associations - Customer services - Selangor - Case studies Faculty Agriculture English

Measuring The Service Quality Of Selangor Area Farmers’ Organisations

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