Determining Gender Differences Amongst Customers on Empathy as a Service Quality Dimension at Licensing Service Centres

Empathy is a pertinent service quality element in organisations, including government institutions. There are limited studies that have focused on empathy as a service quality element in government institutions. The purpose of this paper is to determine the existence of a significant difference in empathy amongst customers in terms of gender at Licensing Service Centres (LSCs) in the City of Tshwane, South Africa. Feminist theory was adopted as a theoretical lens to address the research objective. Quantitative research is adopted to achieve the research objective. Descriptive and parametric tests were conducted to analyse the primary data. The validity and reliability of the data collection instrument were determined through Cronbach's Alpha values with the aid statistical software package, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results confirmed that female customers rated empathy more than their counterparts as a key dimension of service quality at licensing service centres. The paper offers recommendations to key stakeholders in the government institutions and provides directions for future research on service quality.