Eureka! Institutional Repository

The imperative of the age demographic makes services for the elderly a key contemporary marketing issue and challenge in the coming years. We consider this demographic dynamic in detail, highlighting the magnitude of the challenge of the older segment in real terms. Building on this, we address the nature service quality and satisfaction applying this to the nursing home sector. Building on the extant service quality literature, we undertook nine semistructured interviews amongst residents, families and managers of nursing homes in order to understand the nature of the decision and the elements of quality that are considered during this process. Our results highlight the unique features of nursing home expectations and decisions. There are few expectations of service, home is the preferred option, though not available and so this is a negative choice. It is usually a choice that is permanent, though a key feature of the decision stage is the hope of returning home. This service is characterised by high complexity and multiple stakeholders along with a gap between users and service delivers perceptions of what is important. Conceptually, the importance of attributes replaces expectation in the consideration of service quality, and we highlight an important gap between management understanding and the reality of stakeholder experiences.