An Assessment of Retail Service Quality: An Empirical Study of the RSQS in Sri Lankan Supermarkets

Abstract

In today’s highly competitive business environment, service quality has become one of the major determinants of customer satisfaction. It has also become the key to sustainable competitive advantage for mainly service dominant organizations as well as for the grocery retail sector. This study attempts to measure the consumers’ perception on retail service quality and its impact on customers’ satisfaction in supermarkets in Sri Lanka. In order to collect primary data, 168 retail shoppers from major super market outlets in Colombo district were contacted. The Retail Service Quality Scale (RSQS), which comprised of 27 retail service quality items under five dimensions namely, physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problem solving and policy  has been used as the data collection instrument. The results of the study were shown that the retail service quality has a positive correlation with customer satisfaction. Further, 80 percent of the variation has been found which is also in the significant level. It means that, customer satisfaction in the retail super market is determined or influenced by the retail service quality. Therefore, service quality is viewed as strategic formula in the marketing practices among retail outlets to enhance the customer satisfaction in both developed and developing countries. Before we come to the general conclusions in the Sri Lankan context, studies among retail service quality should be taken in the various service industries. Further, the concept like retail service quality should be connected with customer loyalty, customer retention and brand equity to get the more insights in the marketing practices of the retail supermarkets. Additionally, we suggested to the future researchers or scholars to carry the research on the factor analysis in order to find out the applicability of RSQS in the Sri Lankan perspective

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction, Service Quality, Retail Service Quality and Supermarkets.