An evaluation of customer service with regard to service quality amongst merchandise retailers

Abstract

Service quality is an important determinant of customer satisfaction. In recent years the service quality debate has received much attention in retailing. It is therefore not surprising that many firms spend substantial resources to measure service quality and manage customer satisfaction. This research was primarily undertaken to evaluate the quality of service amongst wide variety merchandise retailers. Two towns, namely Tongaat and Umhlanga Rocks in the Northern precinct of the new Durban Unicity were chosen for the study. The former being a town with a low to middle income group and the latter being a town with a high income group. In order to evaluate the quality of service offered by wide variety merchandise retailers an exploratory research was conducted using depth interviews, to detennine aspects that are important to customers regarding service quality. This enabled the researcher to obtain a fairly accurate measure of consumers perceptions of service quality. Since this was an exploratory research, judgement sampling was used in order to ensure a reasonably good mix of different customers from the designated towns. Based on the exploratory research, a twenty five item scale was developed, for the empirical study, taking cognizance of the established SERVQUAL model of Parasuraman et al. (2000:9) and the DRT model of Dabholkar et al. (1996:06). Both the expectation and perception elements were used in measuring service quality. The five dimensions of service quality for retail setting as set out in the DTR model, namely physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problem solving and policy was used in the study. A five point likert scale was used in the questionnaire. The low end of the scale represented a negative response, whilst the high end represented a positive response. With a response rate of 66% from consumers, the researcher was able to prove the hypothesis set ie. a significant difference exist between expectations and perceptions of service quality amongst consumers shopping at wide-variety merchandise retailers. In identifying the priorities for improvement (PFI's) the size of the gap, importance to customers, quick wins and policy regulations were taken into account. In evaluating the overall satisfaction, weighted satisfaction scores were used in the study. The scores were weighted against the importance scores. The empirical evidence reflects that the larger gaps in service quality are in the areas of employee empowerment, especially front-line staff in service recovery, customers with special needs, prompt and courteous service to customers, employee interpersonal skills, employee product knowledge and provision of customer information. Attributes such as store equipment and fixtures, credit facility and store layout emerged as smaller gaps in service quality. These exploratory findings may provide cues for wide-variety merchandise retailers to explore and improve quality in service delivery.