The Influence of SERVQUAL on Behavioral Intentions of Thai Tourists Travelling in the Thai-Myanmar Border Area

INTRODUCTIONSince the late 1970s, many scholars have studied service quality measured by the SERVQUAL method (GrOnroos, 1984). This technique consists of five main aspects: reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibles. The basic focus of this measure is on the quality of services brought to the image of a business. The business image mostly relates to an overview of beliefs, feelings, expectations, and the impression of a person toward a place or something else. For example, a function quality is an expression of a servicer directly to a customer while serving him or her. A technique quality focuses on the goods/services provided to a customer or the result of an interaction between a servicer and a customer.The results of business image creation derived from the function and technique qualities can achieve high customer satisfaction. More pleasures that the customer experiences include the results of assessment, perception, and expectation or the use of the products. However, complaints may occur while using the unqualified products/services, thus causing dissatisfaction. If the complaints do not receive the attention or amendment, the tourists will not use the goods/services anymore. However, if the complaints get noticed or are resolved promptly once the tourists needs, this response can fade the tourist's complaints and lead to increased customer behavioral intention. Tourists are willing to use the services provided and recommend them to other tourists to use/reuse the services.In particular, many countries, including Thailand, have been emplasized for service quality in the tourism industry, because it is a business that can create more jobs and generate income for the people, community, society, and country. Likewise, approximately 850,000 tourists travelled to the Thai-Myanmar border, Mae Sai Sub- District, and Chiang Rai Province. This travel could create jobs and generate incomes to the local people about 500 million Thai baht per day (Tipprasong, 2014). This revenue is considered as the main income for the province.The rapid growth of the tourism industry causes the service quality to decline, resulting in a bad business image from the tourists' perspective. Tourists feel dissatisfied towards the inconvenience of the services received and complain about the unsuitable services. However, if the complaints are immediately responded to, the behavioral intentions of tourists would be created in their mind, attracting the tourists re-visit the attractive places, and vice versa. Therefore, entrepreneurs are required to improve the service quality in the tourism industry (Parasuraman et al., 1988) to meet international standards. Such service quality improvement creates a good business image (GrOnroos, 1984). This good business image then leads to high satisfaction (Oliver, 1980) without tourists' complaints (Zeithaml et al., 1996). Tourists then exhibit behavioral intentions to re-visit the attractive places (Zeithaml, 1988). Due to the stated problems, the researchers seek to study the influence of causal variables affecting the behavioral intentions of the tourists who travel to the Thai- Myanmar border area.ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate the influence of SERVQUAL on behavioral intentions of Thai tourists who travel to the Thai-Myanmar border area.Conceptual FrameworkThe conceptual framework of this research focused on the causal influences of the SERVQUAL, business image, satisfaction, complaints, and behavioral intentions of the tourists. In this study, the tourists' satisfaction and complaints were the intervening variables. The study investigated the direct effect of these two variables as well.HypothesesH1: SERVQUAL has a directly positive effect on business image.H2: SERVQUAL has a directly positive effect on tourist satisfaction.H3: Business image has a directly positive effect on tourist satisfaction. …