Losing the Service Game: An Evaluation of the State of Service Delivery in Urban Councils in Zimbabwe (2006-2009): The Case of Kadoma City Council

This paper sought to establish the state of service delivery in the city of Kadoma, Zimbabwe, from the perspective of residents as customers, as well as outline the challenges of services marketing based on the characteristics of services that distinguish them from physical products. A number of key literary sources that hinge on services marketing and public sector marketing were consulted on which the theoretical underpinnings of the paper were grounded. The city of Kadoma was used as a case study which used the qualitative data techniques to gather data namely observation and face-to-face interviews. Data was collected from residents of the five high density residential areas of Kadoma city and a sample of ten residents was selected from the residential areas, two from each area. Two council managers were selected from the employee side of the council. Non-probabilistic sampling (purposeful sampling) was used to choose both city residents and council managers. The results of the study revealed that the state of service delivery to the residents was greatly unsatisfactory as it was rated very poor; the state of refuse collection, provision of clean water, provision of sanitary facilities, state of roads and public lighting, and state of health delivery were also found to be far below customer expectations. Political interference by central government was also found to be having a big impact on the quality of service delivery by the city of Kadoma.