Evaluation of Service Quality of Rural Production Cooperatives in Ardabil County Using ServQual Method

This study aims to evaluate service quality of of rural production cooperatives in ArdabilCounty. Survey research method is used in this study. All members of the rural cooperatives consist the statistical population of the study and a sample of 180 members of active and inactive cooperatives is selected and the data collected by using standard questionnaire of SeveQual with two sections, i.e., expected and perceived quality. Content and face validity of the instrument confirmed by experts. To measure reliability of the instrument, Chronbach''s alpha was calculated applying a pilot study with 30 members. alpha values of o.882 and 0.912 were obtained for expected and perceived quality, respectively. Results shows that there are significant differences between expectations and perceptions in five dimensions of Seve Qual model for the both groups. So that, in active cooperatives the perception scores are higher than expectations for four dimensions (reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) however, in the inactive cooperatives, perception scores are significantly lower than expectations. Expectation scores in active and inactive cooperatives are 29.56 and 29.68 howevere, their perception scores are 28.02 and 11.85, respectively. It shows that despite of equal expectations of members, inequal services presented by the cooperatives which implies that regardless of other factors, it could affect on the second group to be inefficient and inactive.