Perceived service quality scale for community pharmacies: tool translation of the short form and service quality exploration.

BACKGROUND AND

aimIn the community pharmacy sector the concept of service quality is important. Pharmacists working in these settings provide useful services that go beyond merely dispensing medications. This study aimed to translate the short Perceived Service Quality Scale (PSQS-SF) to Arabic and to use this scale to assess the determinants of service quality of community pharmacies in relation to competitively priced high quality service and loyalty intention.

methodsA pre-validated short Perceived Service Quality Scale (pSQS-A-SF) was translated from English to Arabic, validated and approved by the original authors. The scale consisted of six questions assessing pharmacy service quality, two questions evaluating the perception of price competitiveness, and three questions measuring loyalty intentions. All of the items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale. Community pharmacy users have been approached to answer the survey and descriptive statistics were reported.

resultsThe pSQS-SF was successfully translated and culturally adapted to Arabic context (pSQS-A-SF) with minor modifications. A total of 207 respondents completed the survey. Perceived service quality was rated highly across most items, whereas perceptions of price competitiveness were lower. In confirmatory factor analysis, the measurement model showed improved fit after minor modification (deletion of one service-quality item), with acceptable factor loadings and composite reliability, although average variance extracted was marginal. Service quality was strongly correlated with loyalty intentions. In the structural model, higher perceived service quality predicted greater patronage loyalty (β=0.26, p=0.023) and prescription loyalty (β=0.41, p=0.002), while price competitiveness did not significantly predict loyalty outcomes; private health insurance showed a small positive association with patronage loyalty (β=0.156, p=0.022).

conclusionThe Arabic version of the perceived service quality short-form demonstrates preliminary evidence of construct validity and reliability and can support evaluation of patient experience in Saudi community pharmacies. Perceived service quality-rather than price competitiveness-was linked with self-reported patronage loyalty in this sample. Further research should strengthen validation (including discriminant validity and broader sampling) and assess performance across settings and subgroups.