A STUDY OF SERVICE QUALITY OF BLOOD BANKS

Indian blood transfusion service industry is not able to meet the needs of the society and is still reliant, at least partially, on professional donors. Hence, major focus has to be on encouraging voluntary donors and increasing the supply. To this end, the quality of blood collection service needs to be assuring, hygienic and efficient in order to attract the potential donors. Authors believe the industry being not competitive, lacks incentives to be modern, resulting in fear psychosis, low supply, diseconomies of scale and higher cost of production. The government, by forcing and ensuring highest standards, can help achieve greater voluntary donation resulting in benefits to the industry and to the recipients. The objective of the study is to measure the quality of service provided by the blood banks to the donors of the blood. The research is directed at measuring the costumers' perception of service quality, relative importance of its dimensions and identifying the best practices applicable for blood banks. The research is empirical in nature and is based on administering the modified SERVQUAL instruments on more than 300 blood donors. Using statistical analysis, the paper evaluates the processes at different blood banks.