Retail service quality : a measurement assessment and exploration of customer and sales personnel perceptions

This dissertation was designed to replicate the Retail Service Quality scale (Dabholkar et al., 1996) using customer respondents and to determine whether or not the Retail Service Quality scale could be used to assess retail sales personnel's perception of retail service quality as well. To achieve this objective, data was collected and analyzed under the same conditions as the original study. The results of the data analysis provide evidence that the Retail Service Quality scale is a useful measurement in assessing service quality in retail organizations for both customers and sales personnel.

This study was also developed to explore service quality for retail stores at a dimensional level and determine if the perceptions and the importance of service quality held by retail customers and retail sales personnel differed along service quality dimensions. It was hypothesized that differences would exist between customer and sales personnel perceptions and importance of retail service quality and the five service quality dimensions (physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problem solving, and policy). It was also hypothesized that differences would exist between customer and sales personnel beliefs about the retail store environment. Frequency distributions were used to visually identify any differences that might exist, and independent samples t-test were used to test for these differences. Although not all of the hypotheses were supported, the results of the data analysis provide evidence that many differences do exist between customers and sales personnel.

Finally, this study examines a retail store's environmental characteristics, exploring customer and sales personnel assessments. Using Baker's (1987) typology of environmental elements, the second objective of the study was to determine if store environment beliefs held by retail customers and retail sales personnel could be categorized into three groups: ambient factors, design factors, and social factors. Exploratory factor analysis found that for department stores and mass merchandisers, the store environmental elements were not categorized into these three groups.