The impact of service quality on customer loyalty: a study in organised retail sector

Abstract

In today s changing global environment, every organization is searching for innovative ways to achieve competitive advantage, increased customer loyalty, and improve efficiency without sacrificing quality of service. As markets become more competitive organizations are facing more intense customer service pressures than ever before. Confronted with these challenges, many companies are differentiating their product service offerings by cultivating long-term relationships with their customers, who are setting new standards for service excellence. Service quality has an apparent relationship with customer satisfaction, high revenues, increased cross-sell ratios, higher customer retention, repeat purchasing behaviour and expanded market share. Thus, this study illuminates how retail service quality creates repurchase intentions. The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship of retail service quality with overall service quality and different demographic characteristics of the consumer. It also seeks to assess the importance and impact of service perceptions on customer loyalty when shopping for apparel in organised retail outlets. A total of 424 completed questionnaires obtained from apparel shoppers were used in the analysis for the main study. Principal component analysis was used for scale reduction, and multiple regression analysis was used to find associations. With 26 items of RSQS eight dimensions: helpfulness, policy, appearance, inspiring confidence, problem solving, promises, doing-it-right and convenience were identified. The results confirm the association between the eight service quality dimensions and overall service quality, customer loyalty and repurchase intentions. The results disclose the importance of age, gender, marital status, occupation, highest qualification, and frequency of visiting outlet when evaluating retail service quality.