Authors

Gagliano & Hathcote (1994)

Dabholkar et al. (1996)

Christo & Terblanche (1997)

Research setting(s)

Study sample(s)

Southeastern USA

Customers of specialty
clothing stores

Southeastern USA

Customers of seven
selected stores from
two department store
chains

South Africa

Hypermarket shoppers

Customers of supermarkets and

electronic goods retailers

Mehta et al. (2000)

Singapore

Leung & To (2001)

Hong Kong

Undergraduate students
who were shoppers at
fashion stores

Siu & Cheung (2001)

Hong Kong

Customers of five stores from a

multinational
department store chain

Kim & Jin (2002)

Kim & Stoel (2004)

USA and Seoul, Korea

College students who

were shoppers of
discounts stores

USA

Female online apparel

shoppers

Instrument

Analysis

Refined SERVQUAL scale (Parasuraman et Principal axis factor analysis followed

al., 1991)
by oblique rotation

The authors own scale known as Retail

Confirmatory factor
Service Quality (RSQS) which they
analysis with partial
developed to suit the retail environment after
disaggregation
making some modifications to SERVQUAL

RSQS (Dabholkar et al., 1996)

Confirmatory factor
analysis

RSQS (Dabholkar et al., 1996) and

SERVPERF (Cronin & Taylor, 1992)

Reliability, correlation,
regression and factor
analysis

A 34-item scale developed by Leung & Fung

Reliability and
(1996) for measuring service quality
correlation analysis
specifically in fashion chain stores

RSQS (Dabholkar et al., 1996)

Principal component factor analysis

with varimax rotation

RSQS (Dabholkar et al., 1996)

Confirmatory factor analysis with

partial disaggregation

Loiaconos WebQual scale which evaluates

the website quality

Confirmatory factor analysis

Factor structure or other key findings

The five-factor structure used in this study was reduced to
four factors.
A hierarchical factor structure was proposed comprising
of five dimensions, with three of five dimensions having
two
subdimensions each and overall service
quality as a secondorder factor.

Hierarchical factor structure.The fivefactor

structure of retail service quality dimensions suggested by
Dabholkar et al. (1996) resulted in a reasonable fit.

RSQS was discovered to be more suited in a more goods,

less services environment,
i.e. a supermarket, while SERVPERF was
better for a retailing context where the service element is
prevalent. A modified
scale resulting from a combination of RSQS
and SERVPERF was developed. Five new
factors were identified from this modified
scale.

The scale, comprising of five factors,

possessed high internal consistency but low temporal
stability

Six factors emerged as opposed to the five factor structure

suggested in RSQS
A three-factor structure was found. The RSQS presented a
better fit for the US sample than the Korean consumers.
WebQuals 36 items converged into 12
distinct dimensions (first order factors).
Findings did not support Loiaconos
five-dimensional second-order factor
structure or the authors own proposed sixdimensional
second order factor structure

http://epubl.ltu.se/1653-0187/2009/037/LTU-PB-EX-09037-SE.pdf
http://hraljournal.com/Page/26%20Kuang-Jung.pdf
http://www.gaberic.org/callforpapers.html

Dr. A. N. Sarkar
Editor-ABR (Asia Pacific Business Review)
Asia Pacific Institute of Management,
3 & 4 Institutional Area,
Jasola (Sarita Vihar),
New Delhi - 110025
India
Ph. +91-11-42094838(O)
Fax +91-11-26951541(O)
E-mail:ansarkar@asiapacific.edu

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Ms. Melbin Ritha
Senior Associate Editor
i-manager Publications
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