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VSRD-IJBMR, Vol. 1 (6), 2011, 362-369

RESEARCH ARTICLE RESEARCH ARTICLE

A Chronological Study of Service Quality Research on Retail Sector

1

Sanjeev Kr. Singh* and 2Nripendra Singh

ABSTRACT
Researchers and academician in the area of services around the world have been using various tools and techniques to measure service quality, as a result have been successful in developing scales like SERVQUAL, SERPERF, SERVCON, RSQS etc. These scales are extensively used for measuring service quality in different service sectors in different geographical locations. It has been observed that the applicability of these scales has many limitations or is to be used with appropriate modifications in each circumstances depending on the type of services for which it is to be used. This paper is thus an attempt to bring together all such research instruments, scales, tools & techniques, so as to help future researchers in comparing the same and selecting the one which is more close to their usage. The paper also tries to summaries the dimensions and attributes used by authors for different service businesses. The methodology used is simple comparison method between various studies conducted on service quality issue, using published research papers from different sources like online databases example- Ebsco & Emerald, and physical journals from libraries. This paper is unique as it is for the first time such comprehensive study is done on service quality measurement. Keywords: Service Quality Measurement, Scales and Instruments, SERVQUAL, RSQS, Service Quality Dimension and Attributes.

1. INTRODUCTION
Researchers and academician in the area of services around the world have been using various tools and techniques to measure service quality, as a result have been successful in developing scales like SERVQUAL, SERPERF, SERVCON, RSQS etc. These scales are extensively used for measuring service quality in different service sectors in different geographical locations. Most studies have focused on the instrument developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry (1988) known as SERVQUAL, and out of those majority have been conducted
____________________________ 1 2

Assistant Professor, School of Management, Apeejay Institute of Technology, G.Noida, Uttar Pradesh, INDIA. Assistant Professor, Jaypee Business School, JIIT (Deemed) University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, INDIA. *Correspondence : singhssk@gmail.com

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in western countries to assess its validity and reliability for wide range of service industries. It has been observed that the applicability of these scales has many limitations or is to be used with appropriate modifications in each circumstances depending on the type of services for which it is to be used like Angur, Nataraajan and Jahera (1999) examined the SERVQUAL in the retail banking industry and reported a poor fit of the scale to the empirical data. Despite this, several researchers (Sharma and Mehta, 2004; Bhat, 2005) have used the SERVQUAL scale in similar settings with no assessment of the psychometric soundness of the scale. Given the relatively mature markets where the service quality scales have been developed, it seems unlikely that these measures would be applicable to India without adaptation. This paper is thus an attempt to bring together all such research instruments, scales, tools & techniques, so as to help future researchers in comparing the same and selecting the one which is more close to their usage. The paper also tries to summaries the dimensions and attributes used by authors for different service businesses.

2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The methodology used is simple comparison method between various studies conducted on service quality issue, using published research papers from different sources like online databases example- Ebsco & Emerald, and physical journals from libraries.

3. ANALYSIS OF LITERATURE AND DISCUSSION

Carman (1990) tested SERVQUAL to tyre retailers (a retail setting, offering a mix of merchandise and services). He identified nine factors of service quality, using principal axis factor analysis followed by oblique rotation. On the basis of his findings he concluded that the five dimensions of SERVQUAL were not generic, and suggested that the instrument can be adapted by adding new items or factors according to different situations. Finn and Lamb (1991) tested SERVQUAL in different types of retail stores (department stores and discount stores). Their confirmatory factor analysis was unable to provide a good fit to the proposed five-factor structure of SERVQUAL for either of these commercial formats making them conclude that the instrument could not be used as a valid measure of service quality in retail companies without modifications, although they were unable to provide an acceptable alternative measure. Guiry, Hutchinson and Weitz (1992) modified the original 22 item SERVQUAL to a 51 item instrument by dropping 7 items and adding 36 new items designed to measure service attributes at the retail store level. The exploratory factor analysis carried out by them revealed seven dimensions- Personal service during interaction with employees, Merchandise assortment, and store transaction procedure reliability, Employee availability in the store before interaction, Tangibles, Store service policy reliability and Price. The authors concluded that the number as well as the composition of the dimensions needed to be modified while studying service quality of retail stores. Gagliano and Hathcote (1994) extracted four factors- Personal attention, Reliability, Tangibles and Convenience while investigating service quality in retail-clothing sector. Two of these- Personal attention and

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Convenience have no correspondence to SERVQUAL. The five determinants did not factor out as expected. The authors concluded that the original SERVQUAL scale was not an effective tool for measuring service quality in apparel specialty stores. Vazquez, Rodriguez and Ruiz (1995), identified five dimensions of service quality- Product presentation and shopping convenience, Awareness of promotions, Quality of assortment and of personal interaction, Pricing policy, and Retailers recognition of prestige; using principal component factor analysis. A total of 24 items were identified of which 12 were from SERVQUAL while 12 new items were added by the authors. Boshoff and Terblanche (1997) investigated the reliability and validity of the RSQS in South African retail environment. Analysis of the data revealed that the instrument was a valid and reliable (Cronbach alpha values ranged from 0.68 to 0.90 for the five dimensions) measure of retail service quality in South Africa. The instrument was found to be suitable for studying the service quality of South African retail industry comprising of department stores, specialty stores and hypermarkets that offered a mix of goods and services. Mehta, Lalwani and Han (2000) explored the usefulness of RSQS as a tool for measuring the service quality of different retail environments in Singapore. The authors tested the reliability of the scale and found the Cronbach alpha values to be ranging from 0.52 to 0.86 and 0.75 to 0.92 for the five dimensions of RSQS in the context of supermarket and electronic goods retailers, respectively. However, strong inter-correlation existed between the various dimensions of the RSQS for both supermarket and electronic goods retailers. For supermarkets, Physical aspects and Personal interaction were significant in explaining the variance of the RSQS scale under stepwise regression, while the dimension of Personal interaction alone was significant in contributing to the overall variance for the RSQS scale for an electronic goods retailer. On the basis of these findings, the authors finally concluded that the RSQS scale was a better measure of service quality for a supermarket retailer than for an electronic goods retailer. Siu and Cheung (2001) used RSQS for studying a well known departmental store chain in Hong Kong. Principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation performed on 25 items of RSQS (3 items were deleted in a pretest) failed to identify the five dimensions of - Physical aspects, Reliability, Personal interaction, Problem solving and Policy. Instead six service quality dimensions emerged from their study. These were Personal interaction, Physical appearance, Promises, Policy, Convenience and Problem solving. The fact that the original Reliability dimension did not factor out was consistent with the findings of the study conducted by Mehta, Lalwani and Han (2000) in the context of supermarkets in Singapore. Siu and Cheung concluded that though RSQS could be applied for studying retail stores in Hong Kong some modifications were required. Kim and Jin (2002) similarly, tried to determine whether RSQS could be validated in the context of discount stores for US and Korean customers. The authors found the five items designed to measure Policy to be unreliable in both countries. This could have been on account of the fact that the Policy dimension was simply not present in customers perception of service quality for discount stores (Kim and Jin 2002). By using only three dimensions of retail service quality - Physical aspects, Reliability and Personal attention, RSQS appeared to provide a good fit to the data for both the US and Korean samples. However, measurement equivalence did not exist across the two samples even though the factor structure remained the same. The authors therefore

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concluded that RSQS could not be viewed as a reliable and valid measure for cross-cultural comparisons. Siu and Chow (2003) used Siu and Cheungs (2001) adapted version of RSQS to examine the service quality of a Japanese supermarket in Hong Kong and its impact on customer satisfaction and future consumption behavior. Few items were deleted as the Cronbach alpha showed that they were inconsistent with other items in the same dimension. The remaining 23 items were reduced into five dimensions of Personal Interaction, Trustworthiness, Physical Aspect, Policy and Reliability. The original dimension of Problem Solving as given in the retail service quality scale was integrated into the Personal Interaction construct while a new factor emerged in this study, which was labeled as Trustworthiness. The integration of Problem solving dimension with the Personal interaction dimension is similar to that done by Kim and Jin (2002) in their study of US and Korean customers. Kaul (2005) tested the applicability of RSQS in the Indian specialty apparel store context. Confirmatory factor analysis of the component structures using AMOS 4.0 indicated that the RSQS dimensions were not valid in India. According to her none of component models of the RSQS dimensions fit the data, indicating that the RSQS factor structure is not applicable to the Indian retail setting. Analysis of the data indicated that the Indian consumer did not distinguish between service attributes related to Reliability and Policy. Findings of the study indicate that RSQS has a four dimensions structure in Indian retailing. Authors found that the attribute - store gives customers individual attention (a Personal Interaction item) and the attribute - store has clean physical facilities (related to Physical Aspects), were perceived as policy related matters by the Indian consumers. At the sub-dimensions level, a four-factor structure instead of six factors was supported by the data. Except for the subdimensions pertaining to Physical aspects dimension, no other sub-dimensions were supported. Besides this the sub-dimensions are highly correlated not just within the dimension but also across the dimensions of Reliability and Personal Interaction. These findings raise doubts about the validity of RSQS as a measure of service quality in Indian retailing. Kim and Jin (2002) point out that among the five dimensions of the RSQS, Problem Solving and Policy were the only two new dimensions proposed by Dabholkar et al. (1996), the rest being similar to SERVQUAL. In the study of discount store customers in US and Korea (Kim and Jin 2002), and the study of supermarket customers in Hong Kong (Siu and Chow 2003), the Problem Solving dimension merged with Personal Interaction dimension, as customers failed to distinguish between the two. The Policy dimension had to be dropped in the study of discount store customers in US and Korea (Kim and Jin, 2002) due to low item to total correlation. These findings call researchers to consider whether RSQS (Dabholkar et al. 1996) provides an effective measure of service quality for retail stores or does SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al. 1988) serve the purpose. Sureshchander, Rajendran and Kamalnaban (2001) raised the question of whether service quality scales such as SERVQUAL address the critical aspects apart from an examination of the face validity of the items. Pre-test interviews were conducted solely for the purpose of assessing wording of items. However, shoppers mentioned several service aspects, such as mailers sent by store and loyalty programs as being missing from the scale. The RSQS is possibly not just inaccurate but also incomplete in the Indian context. Future research needs to examine not just the factor structure of service quality but also develop a scale that captures the entire store service construct. Developing a scale for measuring service quality in Indian retail - which is comprehensive and can provide homogenous factors - would fulfill the urgent strategic need of Indian retailers. The retailers would

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then be able to identify service quality areas requiring improvement. Such a scale would be able to track improvements in specific areas of service. Unless this is possible, any service quality scale would have limited application for the retailers. Unfortunately, without extensive adaptation, RSQS is simply not suited to address these needs. Table 1 : Summary of Literature on Service Quality in Retail
Author Carman Year 1990 Service Industry Tyre retailing, offering a mix of merchandise and services Department stores and discount stores Retail store Dimensions and Attributes Identified nine factors of service quality Findings Five dimensions of SERVQUAL were not generic, and suggested that the instrument be adapted by adding new items or factors as pertinent to different situations Confirmatory factor analysis was unable to provide a good fit to the proposed five-factor structure of SERVQUAL Number as well as the composition of the dimensions needed to be modified while studying service quality of retail stores.

Finn and Lamb

1991

No such dimension were given by the reseacher Proposed 51 Items instrument by dropping 7 items and adding 36 new items Extracted four factors out of which two have no correspondence to SERVQUAL Proposed a new set of five dimensions Retained five dimension of RSQS

Guiry, Hutchinson and Weitz

1992

Gagliano and Hathcote

1994

Retail-clothing sector

Original SERVQUAL scale was not an effective tool for measuring service quality in apparel specialty stores

Vazquez, Rodriguez and Ruiz Boshoff and Terblanche

1995

Investment Banker Department stores and specialty stores Electronic Goods Retailers and supermarkets four small retail businesses within provincial cities in South East Queensland. Departmental stores

1997

24 items were identified where 12 were from SERVQUAL and researcher added 12 new items Found RSQS a reliable and valid instrument to measure retail service quality.

Mehta, Lalwani and Han

2000

The dimensions of RSQS are relatively good in case of supermarket No suggestion for any such new dimension is given

Found RSQS a better instrument to measure service quality for a supermarket retailer than for an electronic goods retailer.

Fogarty, G., Catts, R., & Forlin, C.

2000

Analyses suggested that the five factors can be treated as five different stages of service quality, rather than as five qualitatively different dimensions.

Siu and Cheung

2001

Six dimensions service quality

of

Failed to identify the five dimensions of RSQS. The original Reliability dimension was not fit for study. Shoppers mentioned several service aspects, such as mailers sent by store and loyalty programs as being missing from the scale Without extensive adaptation, RSQS is possibly not just inaccurate but also incomplete in the Indian context, Found the five items designed to measure service quality to be unreliable.Policy dimension was simply not present in customers perception of service quality for discount stores. Cronbach alpha values show that the dimension Problem solving was integrated

Sureshchander, Rajendran and Kamalnaban

2001

Retail stores in India

Some dimension and attributes need to be modified

Kim and Jin

2002

Discount stores

Siu and Chow

2003

Supermarkets

Only three dimensionPhysical aspects, Reliability and Personal attention were found valid Proposed new set of five dimensions

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Kaul

2005

Specialty Apparel stores

Larsen and Esbjerg

2006

Fruit and vegetable departments in retail chain Kirana stores supermarkets, and hypermarkets

Service quality has a four dimensions structure in Indian retailing New set of dimension should be included

to Personal interaction, where a new dimension emerged as Trustworthiness. RSQS dimensions were not valid in India.

The perception of service quality in Fruit and vegetable department is different than the other two departments because of experience and credence quality. Customer patronage to grocery stores was found to be positively related to location, helpful, trustworthy salespeople, home shopping, cleanliness, offers, quality and negatively related to travel convenience. Kiranas do well on location but poorly on cleanliness, offers, quality, and helpful trustworthy salespeople. The converse is true for organized retailers.

Promita Goswami And Mridula S. Mishra

2007

A separate scale need to be developed for kirana stores.

4. MEASURING RETAIL SERVICE QUALITY USING SERVQUAL AND RSQS

A retail store experience significantly differs from a non retail store experience in terms of customers negotiating their way through the store, finding the merchandise they want, interacting with several store personnel along the way, and returning the merchandise, all of which influence customers perceptions of service quality. The uniqueness of the services offered by a retailer makes it mandatory that care be taken while selecting and using scales for measuring service quality in retail store context. Though the absence of alternate measures of service quality in a retail environment has often meant that SERVQUAL be used for this purpose; researchers (Finn and Lamb 1991) have cautioned that care must be taken when applying SERVQUAL in retail setting. The studies related to RSQS also show that the scale does not feet across the retail formats, and specially in Indian market it needs to be completely modified.

5. CONCLUSION
Since all the studies in this reference were done in their respective formats of retail and their countries, the results which have been found and referred, again have been criticized that they are not valid in the other countries and other retail formats. The scope of research is there to explore the perception of service quality dimensions for different retail sectors.

6. REFERENCES

[1] Babakus, E and Boller, G W (1992). An Empirical Assessment of the SERVQUAL Scale, Journal of Business Research, 24(3), 253-268. [2] Baker, Julie; Grewal, Dhruv and Parasuraman, A (1994). The Influence of Store Environment on Quality Inferences and Store Image, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 22(4), 328-339. [3] Bech-Larsen, Tino; Esbjerg, Lars, (2006), The Garden of the Self-Service Store: A Study of Customer Perceptions of the Fruit and Vegetable Departments Influence on Store Image Journal of Food Products

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Marketing, Vol. 12(3), pp. 87-102. [4] Berry, Leonard L (1986). Retail Businesses are Service Businesses, Journal of Retailing, 62(1), 3-6. [5] Bolton, R.N. and Drew, J.H. (1991), A Multistage Model of Customers Assessment of Service Quality and Value, Journal of ConsumerResearch, March 1991, pp. 375-84 [6] Boshoff, Christo, and Terblanche, Nic S. (1997), Measuring Retail Service Quality: A Replication Study, South African Journal of Business Management, 1997 No. 4. . [7] Boulding, W., Kalra, A., Staelin, R. and Zeithaml, V.A. (1993), A Dynamic Process Model of Service Quality: From Expectations to Behavioral Intentions, Journal of Marketing Research, February 1993, pp. 7-27. [8] Carman, J.M. (1990), Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality: An Assessment of the SERVQUAL Dimensions, Journal of Retailing,1990, pp. 33-55. [9] Christine Simms, (1992) Green Issues And Strategic Management In The Grocery Retail Sector, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 20, Issue1. [10] Cronin, J.J. and Taylor, S.A. (1992), Measuring Service Quality: A Reexamination and Extension, Journal of Marketing, July1992, pp. 55-68. [11] Dabholkar, P A; Thorpe, D I and Rentz, J O (1996). A Measure of Service Quality for Retail Stores: Scale Development and Validation, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 24(1), 3-16. [12] Donthu, N and Yoo, B (1998). Cultural Influences on Service Quality Expectations, Journal of Service Research, 1, 178-186. [13] Enis, Matthew (2009) Fresh-Cut Fruits Help Stem Losses. Supermarket News, Vol. 57, Issue 13 (Business Source Complete- Database) [14] Freeman, K D and Dart, J (1993). Measuring the Perceived Quality of Professional Business Services, Journal of Professional Services Marketing, 9, 27-47. [15] Hummel, J W and Savitt, Ronald (1988). Integrated Customer Service and Retail Strategy, International Journal of Retailing, 3(2), 5-21. [16] Hutcheson, G.D. and Mutinho, L. (1998), Measuring preferred store satisfaction using consumer choice criteria as a mediating factor, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 14.) [17] Johan Anselmsson, Ulf Johansson and Niklas Persson, (2007), Understanding price premium for grocery products: a conceptual model of customer-based brand equity Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. no.16/6, pp. 401414. [18] Kelley, Scott W and Davis, Mark A (1994). Antecedents to Customer Expectations for Service Recovery, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 22(1), 52-61. [19] Kim, Soyoung and Jin, Byoungho (2002), Validating the Retail Service Quality Scale for US and Korean Customers of Discount Stores: An Exploratory Study, Journal of Services Marketing, 2002 No. 3, pp. 223237 [20] Leo J. Shapiro and Associates, The Influence of Store Atmospherics, Consumer Behavior, 2006, p115-120 [21] Maruyama, M. and Trung, L.V. (2007), Traditional bazaar or supermarkets: a probit analysis of affluent consumer perceptions in Hanoi, The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, Vol. 17 No. 3, July, pp. 233-52.) [22] Miller, Cyndee. Better Quality, Packaging Boost Popularity Of Private Label Goods Marketing News,

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11/9/1992, Vol. 26 Issue 23, p1-15 [23] Mulhern, Francis J.; Leone, Robert P. (1991,) Implicit Price Bundling of Retail Products: A Multiproduct Approach to Maximizing Store Profitability Journal of Marketing, Vol. 55, Issue 4, p63-76 [24] Promita Goswami and Mridula Mishra, (2009), Would Indian consumers move from kirana stores to organized retailers when shopping for groceries? Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp- 127-143. [25] Steve Burt, (2000) The strategic role of retail brands in British grocery retailing European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 34 No. 8, 2000, pp. 875-890. [26] Swoboda, Haelsig, Morschett and Schramm-Klein (2007), An intersector analysis of the relevance of service in building a strong retail brand, Journal of Managing Service Quality , Vol. 17 No.4, pp. 428-44.

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