Economical Assessment of Quality of Innovative Services
2010
Rita Greitāne, Anatolijs Magidenko

In the article authors handle questions related to quality issues. Latvia can be characterized as a country where gross domestic product is heavily dominated by services. The quality as an assembly of the properties, which meet customer needs, is one of the main factors making up the competitiveness of services. Level of provision of determined quality service is linked with a certain cost of service quality and with the appropriate price. Consumers are increasingly focused on service quality and price ratio. This determines the market demand for services with the best quality to price ratio. Therefore it is important to determine the correct price for quality of service. Thus the objective of the article is to determine nature of the qualiunit method and possibility to use it in the economic evaluation of service quality in service enterprises. Objective of the research is to develop simple method that small and medium enterprises of Latvia could use for evaluation of quality economics. Different methods, such as method of comparison, statistical methods (calculation of average and relative values), indexes method and grouping method are used in the study. Qualiunit method is new method. This method can evaluate the service quality costs and service prices. Qualiunit method is considered as one of the methods, which belongs to the cost factor and unit system. Qualiunit method makes it possible quickly and comparably easy to assess services (including new services) from point of view of price and quality. This is important for small and medium enterprises, because provides to possibility to keep competitive advantage and react quickly on changing market demand. Qualiunit method requires to develop an easy to use service classification and to assess the appropriate level of quality of service groups. Taking into account the real price of services, the service level in terms of money is defined. Then, taking into account the importance of services, the value amount of service quality level is calculated. Next the unit price of base quality level is calculated. Thus, the price of new service is determined by multiplying the base quality level price with the level of quality of new service and importance factor of the service. Method foresees development of qualiunit norms respective to used service classification according to service outcome. Advantage of qualiunit method is in simplicity of usage and possibility of quick assessment of alternative services to make sound business decisions. Moreover, in the assessment of new services multi-factor approach is used. Thus it is possible to increase the competitiveness of services in the market. Since services account for a significant part of the country's gross domestic product, the opportunity to maintain their volume depends on the innovative character of services and opportunities to offer them at a competitive price.


Keywords
services, levl of quality, price, qualiunit, competitiveness

Greitāne, R., Magidenko, A. Economical Assessment of Quality of Innovative Services. Economics and Business. Vol.20, 2010, pp.47-50. ISSN 1407-7337.

Publication language
Latvian (lv)
The Scientific Library of the Riga Technical University.
E-mail: uzzinas@rtu.lv; Phone: +371 28399196