Business Research in Service Industries: The Choice of Meaningful Methodological Approaches

The competitiveness of many service organizations depends largely on the operational effectiveness of the organization itself. This means that the delivery system should always be conducive to the customers, management as well as the stakeholders. This paper discusses two scenarios where choice of meaningful approach in business research is applicable. The first scenario is the selection of business location for healthcare organization and the second is the dealing of "delivery-time" service in fund financial service. In the first scenario, the adoption of AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) approach in evaluating the best location strategy is considered as more meaningful as compared to the existing approach of factor-rating method. The second scenario, rather than using the normal percentage of non-conformance of certain norms, the use of Gap Analysis approach is recommended. The AHP Approach utilizes data with respect to various criteria or factors as well as weights for each of the criterion used. On the other hand, in Gap Analysis, the data reflects the actual "delivery time" as compared to the "planned or targeted delivery time." The AHP methodology used in the study might give different results from the management and staffs' perspective as compared to customers' perspective. However, it gives the advantage of not giving an intuitively biased decision. This is due to the fact that the calculations of weights of the factors are not influenced by subjectivity. In the case of the Gap Analysis, it is considered as reliable because we could use inferential statistics by resorting to significant tests. The results in both scenarios can help management in their operational planning. What is important is that, it gives benevolent impact to both organizations.