infonet-economy

Due to increasing market competition, the purchasing and the measurement of the quality of goods and services can be considered as an essential task within a company. While goods purchasing and evaluation is a well-known process, research on acquisition and evaluation of business services still barely exists. Although the importance of service quality aspects seems obvious, existing approaches mainly consider monetary evaluation criteria. The following work provides a systematic approach in order to increase the understanding of business service evaluation, using case study research from five Swiss multinational companies. Additionally, a literature review provides insights into existing evaluation procedures. A contingency approach is used as the theoretical basis to address differences in the applied evaluation approach regarding the service type and the point of a service consumption. Results provide insights into different evaluation scopes; revealing different requirements and varying accuracy depending on the service type and the person responsible for the evaluation. Conclusively, the results and their limitations are discussed in regard to their managerial and theoretical contribution.