The purpose of this paper was to identify the articles that have had the greatest impact on the service quality literature, as well as to analyze the trend over time. The methodology adopted was based on the bibliometric techniques of citation and co-citation analysis, which are applied to all articles published on the subject and available in the ISI Web of Science database. This study identified 226 articles related to service quality published from 1983 to 2011. In order to assess the national production, a similar survey was conducted in Scielo (1993-2011), with the adoption of qualitative methodology. The results obtained in the citation and co-citation analysis indicated the use of classical quality models as basis for quality service. On the other hand, data analysis from both databases indicated a predominance of adoption, by researchers, of tools and authors from the '1980s and '90s, with emphasis to the health care sector in terms of production.
Service quality; Bibliometric techniques; Citation and co-citation analysis; Literature review
