Customer satisfaction in Zara

Methodology The size of the sample was 33. Thirty questionnaires in order to make the quantitative research were given and for the qualitative research 3 interviews were answered. The convenience sampling was used since the quantitative and qualitative research was done in house at one of the Zaras stores. It was the easiest way to collect the answers since it was obvious that the participants were Zaras customers. For the quantitative research more samples were used than for the qualitative one. Therefore, the research will rely more on the questionnaire. However, there are also some limitations to that. When dealing with questionnaires the answers are too general and they can not be well interpreted. Also, the fact that the sample was made of only 30 respondents makes the job even more difficult. The sample is too small to measure the customer satisfaction of store and the results are not very reliable. The questionnaires contained 15 questions about the staff, the atmosphere, the music, and the products. In the first part of the questionnaire the respondents are asked to state their opinion about the products and services. The next question is very important since they are asked whether they would suggest the store to a friend. This measures the perception of Zara. Furthermore, there are questions regarding the last experience of the store. Question number four is the same as question 1 since we want to make sure that the individuals pay attention when completing the questionnaires and that they are not lying. In the second part of the questionnaire people are asked their opinion about the services, the employees, the music, the cleanness, and the queues. Finally, in the last part of the questionnaire, personal information is to be provided such as job, gender, and age. Demographics are on purpose the last questions since some people are sensitive when it comes to these types of questions and if they would have seen these questions in the beginning maybe they would choose not to complete it.

There were also developed some interviews in order to find some broader answers regarding our research. Therefore, a non-random sample was chosen, since three of the people that answered the questionnaire were chosen. They were also delivered in house at the store. We allocated five minutes since only seven questions were delivered. The purpose of the interview was to have a better understanding of how customers perceive Zara, what they like and what they dislike about the store in order to improve furthermore all the necessaries. The beginning of the interview we asked questions about the products, the store and the loyalty of the customers. In the end of the interview we try to find out what people like and dislike about the store.

Results
Quantitative research After imputing the data into SPSS, some frequencies were performed in order to see the percentages of males and females that answered the questionnaire as well as the percentages of their age, occupation and loyalty. The results are as follows : Differences between genders

Gender Frequency Valid female male Total 20 10 30 Percent 66.7 33.3 100.0 Valid Percent 66.7 33.3 100.0 Cumulative Percent 66.7 100.0

There were 20 females representing 66.7 % of the total sample and 10 males representing 33.3 %. Age groups

Age Frequency Valid 1 2 3 4 5 8 Total 12 6 4 1 6 1 30 Percent 40.0 20.0 13.3 3.3 20.0 3.3 100.0 Valid Percent 40.0 20.0 13.3 3.3 20.0 3.3 100.0 Cumulative Percent 40.0 60.0 73.3 76.7 96.7 100.0

There are eight categories of ages as seen from the statistics. Each number represents one category. The first number represents the age category between 18-25 years old, the second number represents the age between 26-30 years old, the third category 31-35 years old, the fourth from 36-40 years old, the fifth from 41-45, the sixth from 46-50, the seventh from 51-55 and the eight category 56 and more. As it can be seen, customers having ages between 18-25 are the most frequent making a percentage of 40. This can also be one of the target groups of the store. Customers from the second category (26-30) make up a percentage of 20 coming in a number of 6. From the third category (31-35) there were only 4 people answering, having a percentage of 13.3. Six people represent the fifth category (20% of the sample), there are no people from the 6th and the 7th category, and only one person representing 3.3 % of the sample has the age 56 or more. This implies that young adults are the ones frequently visiting the store and that people having ages from 45 and more do not visit the store so often.

Occupation

Occupation Frequency Valid 1 2 3 4 5 Total 2 3 8 4 13 30 Percent 6.7 10.0 26.7 13.3 43.3 100.0 Valid Percent 6.7 10.0 26.7 13.3 43.3 100.0 Cumulative Percent 6.7 16.7 43.3 56.7 100.0

Just like the graph with age groups, this one has also numbers each one representing a field of work. Therefore, we used number 1 to represent the manual workers that make up to 6.2 % (2 individuals) of our sample, number 2 that represents professionals (high executive) that make up 10 % (3 individuals) of the sample, number 3 to represent public/ private sector employee, being composed of 26.7% (8 individuals) of

the whole sample, number 4 representing the self employed category that build up to 13.3 % (4 individuals) from the sample and number 5 representing students that make up to 40 % of the whole sample. From these frequencies it can be seen the fact that most of the customers are students. Furthermore, from all the frequencies presented it can be seen that the most frequent customers found in the store is composed by female students, having ages between 18-25. Descriptives Descriptives were ran for 8 questions in order to see the how satisfied are the customers in general with the facilities of the store. Descriptive Statistics N impressionpr impressionserv employeesvbcustomers Music accessability Queues Cleanness Fittingrooms Valid N (listwise) 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 As closer the mean score to 4, as unsatisfied the customers are. Therefore, when having a look at the mean scores it can be seen that they are satisfied in general about the facilities in the store. The only mean score that is very close to 4 is the one from the queues, therefore, the customers are not very happy about the queues in the store. Minimum 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Maximum 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 Sum 75 83 85 73 77 99 74 81 Mean 2.50 2.77 2.83 2.43 2.57 3.30 2.47 2.70 Std. Deviation 1.009 1.040 1.234 .971 1.194 1.236 1.008 1.343 Variance 1.017 1.082 1.523 .944 1.426 1.528 1.016 1.803

ANOVA An ANOVA test was runned in order to see whether there was a relation between the money that the customers were paying for the products and their occupation. At a first sight it may be obvious that the one that have a higher job position would be willing to pay more on the products.

ANOVA occupation Sum of Squares Between Groups Within Groups Total 3.630 45.736 49.367 df 4 25 29 Mean Square .908 1.829 F .496 Sig. .739

Since the significance level is more than 0.05 (0.739) it means that the test shows no significant relation between the job position and the money that customers are paying for the products. t-test Furthermore, a t-test was performed in order to see whether there is a relation between gender and the overall impression of the products.

Group Statistics gender impressionpr male female N 10 20 Mean 3.30 2.10 Std. Deviation .949 .788 Std. Error Mean .300 .176

As it can be seen from the table the mean of the male is different that the mean of the females. When the mean is bigger that 3 it suggests that the customer was not satisfied. In the case of the males, the mean is 3.30, meaning that they are not very satisfied with the products, moreover their answers in average were somewhere between neutral to very bad. On average, the answers of the females were 2.10. This means that they were more satisfied than men, and their mean answer can be placed somewhere between neutral and very good. The test shows a significance level smaller than 0.05. However, there is a limitation to that and the tests can not be very reliable since we had more females than males in our sample, therefore the results can be influenced by that.

Cross-tab The purpose of running a Cross-tab test was to find out the correlation between gender and if they would suggest or not Zara to a friend.

gender * suggestion Crosstabulation Count suggestion 1 gender 1 2 Total 5 19 24 2 5 1 6 Total 10 20 30

The results show that 5 males (gender1) would suggest Zara to a friend and 5 would not suggest it. Nineteen females (gender2) would suggest Zara to a friend while 1 would not. This shows how women are more satisfied with the products than men. But

again, due to the inequality of the genders in the sample the data can not be considered 100 % reliable.

Qualitative research The answers from the interview helped in interpreting the results since they were more elaborate and descriptive. Therefore, the three interviews will be analyzed and then interpreted. In the first question all the three customers answered more or less that they prefer Zara due to the variety of products and accessible prices. In the second question regarding the reason for which they buy the products from Zara one of the respondents said that he likes the t-shirts and the other 2 said that they buy due to the prices and the nice designs even if the quality is not so good. The third question asks the customers if they see each other buying the products in ten years from now. Two of them answered yes, and one of them said that if she will have a higher income and the possibility of buying something better she will buy from Zara only clothes to wear in the house. In the fourth question regarding the staff people suggested that they are not very satisfied, only one of the respondents saying good which can not e interpreted as something extremely positive though. One of them was further suggesting that especially the staff from Greece is not treating the customers how they are supposed to. The 6th question was asking opinions about the quality of the clothes. Two of the respondents said the quality is ok for everyday wear and one said that the quality is poor. The lack of sizes and high quality materials, the long queues and the fact that sometimes the store is too crowded make people dislike Zara. However, they like the fact that there are cheap clothes, a lot of variety to choose from and many clothes that are inspired from the designers collections. None of the three respondents considers itself as being a loyal customer. One of the respondents was 18, one 19 and the other 22. There were two females and one male answering the interview, and all of them were students.

Marketing implications After running the entire test in SPSS and interpreting the results there are further suggestions that need to be made in order to increase the customer satisfaction in Zara. First of all when dealing with the sample in house in one of the Zara stores more women than men were found even if it was a big store having clothes for both genders. Therefore, the marketing department should pay more attention in attracting also males. From the cross tab test it was noticed that men are not satisfied with the products from the store. Consequently, a closer look in satisfying also this part of the clientele should become important. Most of the clients had the ages between 18-25, therefore a secondary target group including also people with different ages would not be bad. The occupation was closely related to the age category, therefore most of the respondents were students. This implies the fact that if they would target people with different ages also they will also have a variety in occupations. From the descriptives and also interviews it could be noticed that people are not happy at all with the queues. Therefore, the staff should be more organized in overcoming these incidents. Also from the interviews it was seen that the customers are happy with the prices but they are not happy with the quality of the products. Moreover, one girl mentioned that in the future, if she will have a higher income she will choose Zara only when it comes for house clothes. This means that maybe the students are satisfied for now since they do not afford buying something more expensive, but they will not come to the store in the future. Therefore, some suggestions straight to the point were made in order to increase the satisfaction among customers. Attract more males Make the male products more attractive Secondary target group including older people having high job positions Take care of the queues Train the staff, especially the one in Greece Improve the quality of products

Try to keep the customers loyal in the future

Zara, like many other stores of this kind is very popular and it has a great success among students and teenagers. However, if an improve is wanted in the perception of the store, some steps have to be followed in increasing the customer satisfaction. Even a successful store like Zara needs improvements.