دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی توسعه یک مقیاس کیفیت خدمات در زمینه خرده فروشی مواد غذایی سازمان یافته هند - امرالد 2018

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to check the reliability and validity of a well-acknowledged scale developed by Pratibha A. Dabholkar (1996) in the context of Indian organized grocery retail and also to identify new aspects of service quality with respect to grocery retail from literature that have not been taken into account in earlier studies and to finally develop a new scale to measure service quality of organized retail grocery stores with consultation from several experts. Design/methodology/approach – In order to achieve the objectives of the research, both descriptive and exploratory research designs have been employed such that a survey of 800 respondents was undertaken as part of descriptive research whereas exploratory research was conducted to add new dimensions to the existing service quality measurement model so as to develop a new comprehensive scale. Findings – The results of the study suggest that all the five dimensions of Dabholkar’s model are not suitable to measure service quality in Indian organized grocery retail stores. Therefore, a new instrument with total four dimensions has been developed. Practical implications – The study is of great importance for the retailers as it offers a more comprehensive and specific scale to measure service quality of organized grocery retail stores. Originality/value – This research supports and makes contribution to the previous research on development of service quality measurement scales in Indian context.

Conclusion

This study has made an important contribution to the service quality literature by developing a valid and reliable scale specific to measuring service quality of organized grocery retail stores. The scale measures overall service quality through four specific dimensions. The dimension physical aspects includes items related to cleanliness, modernity of the infrastructure used, layout, time and location convenience, etc. The dimension namely trustworthiness takes into account aspects of service quality such as safety and security, authenticity, etc. The third dimension namely personal attention measures attributes such as courteousness of employees, their knowledge and training and their ability to deliver service efficiently. The last dimension covers aspects related to store’s policies such as operating hours, payment modes, product lines offered, etc. As compared to the previous more popular scales measuring service quality such as SERVQUAL, SERVPERF, RSQS, etc., this scale is more specific and comprehensively measures the attributes related to an organized grocery retail store in Indian context. The effects of factors such as environment, price, distance, promotion, etc. have also been taken into consideration which was previously ignored. Unlike, RSQS model, the new measure is a comparatively simplified model without the presence of sub-dimensions (Martinez, 2010; Ladhari, 2008). The scale is of immense importance for the marketing managers and service marketers who will be able to measure and improve the service quality perceptions of their customers by focusing on more relevant aspects and will also be able to enhance the customer experience by formulating different strategies based on customer segmentation.