ASSESSING THE SERVICE QUALITY OF ROADSIDE AUTO GARAGES COMPARED TO THE STANDARD GARAGES IN GHANA. THE CASE OF CAPE COAST METROPOLIS

ABSTRACT

The automobile repair industry is chosen for this research because it is considered as one of the most important and strategic industries that support all sectors of the economy. The main purpose of the study is to do assessment of service quality of roadside garages compared to standard auto garages in Ghana. This study adopted the case study strategy and used questionnaires to gather data. The targeted population for the study was three hundred (300) which was made up of costumers of auto garages (commercial drivers, private drivers, and transport managers), workshop managers, and master mechanics of both the standard and roadside garages in the Cape Coast Metropolis. Thus 70 customers and 27 mechanics, from standard and road side garages were sampled using random sampling methods. The SPSS version 18, MS Word and MS Excel was used to analyse the data. Data was presented in tabular form. The study revealed that a large number of the auto-mechanics in both the roadside and standard garages have considerable years of auto repair working experience, but the roadside garages lack the ability to diagnose and repair modern automobile vehicles due to low educational and technical levels. The study also revealed that the basic hand tools were available at both roadside and standard garages; however, only the standard garages had diagnostic and power equipment in the cape coast metropolis. The major findings concluded that the challenges facing roadside garages are difficulty in securing funding for operations, inadequate facilities to organise in-service training to upgrade the skills of mechanics, difficulty in acquiring land for the establishment of garages. The government should provide funding to both road side garages and standard garages to enhance their operations. Institutions and all stakeholders in the automobile industry should be adequately resourced to periodically organise inservice training to upgrade the skills of the mechanics.