The impact of service quality on the customers in the organized grocery stores in Odisha

For any business, customers are considered to be the lifeblood. In the present business scenario, the primary need is to understand the behaviour of the customers under different circumstances. The market share increases and the customers are retained if the business organization provides high-quality services and satisfies the customers (Finn & Lamb, 1991). If it is not possible for any business to satisfy its customers and keep them its profit will decrease and the growth prospect for the organization will also be lowered. The 80/20 rule given by Pareto also states that 80% of the dealing in trade is achieved by 20% of the faithful and the trustworthy customers and vice versa. When customers perceive good service they tell 9 to 10 people. According to Gitomer (1998), in America, about half of the businesses are based on the informal “word-of-mouth” (WOM) communication. Griffin (1995) and Thuan, Ngoc and Trang (2018) have stated that profits can increase by 25% or more if the customers are retained by even a few percentages of points. It has been found by the University of Michigan that on an average if the satisfaction of the customers increase by 1% then the increment on the return on investment is 2.37% (Keiningham & Vavra, 2001).

These have created an interest among the researchers to explore the antecedents of economic performance (Ittner & Larcker, 1998). These researchers have concluded that the economic performance improves with the improvement in the service quality. If the best methodologies are practiced then the consequences for the businesses are great.

Several service quality scales have been introduced in the literature on marketing management to help the f irm's measure and improve the customer service experience. The primary objective of this dissertation is to find the impact of service quality on the customers and the retailers. This study identif ies the dimensions of service quality and proposes a model examining the direct relationship among the constructs. The gap between the expected service quality and the perceived service quality is found out. How the perceived service quality changes with the change in demographics is analyzed. The impact of demographics on the behaviour of the customers is computed and an investigation of the assessments of service quality across the retail formats is made.

After developing the conceptual framework, identifying the constructs and finalizing the questionnaire based on the high reliability obtained during the pilot study, it was decided that the survey would be conducted in two types of grocery stores namely supermarket and hypermarket. A total of 402 responses were collected. A quantitative approach using SPSS version 20 is used that caters to the exploratory nature of the work. Statistical techniques like ANOVA, independent sample t-test, paired sample t-test, exploratory factor analysis, correlation and multiple regression analysis have been used to tests the hypotheses and answer the research questions.

An important finding is that both types of stores are not responding to customer complaints effectively which must be noted by these stores. Various media reports (television, newspaper, magazines) indicate that customer complaints regarding various services have increased for different segments of customers. From this study it can be said that the hypermarkets should focus on providing higher customer service.

To remain competitive, there is a need for the employees to be friendly. They should inculcate confidence in the customers of the hypermarket and the supermarket. The lack of this quality does not satisfy the customers but the presence of it appears to delight them. Further, the customers will become loyal and develop a trust for their store. As a result, the customers would recommend their stores to others and encourage them to do business.

Retail customers shop at many varieties of stores that compete among themselves on different service attributes. So this study will contribute to the understanding of the customers’ perceived service quality across the different types of stores. These stores compete among themselves on various service attributes. For coming to the conclusion on which service to select and encourage the retailers should give emphasis to the differences that the customers consider to be important and also those that are different from the competitors and are better with respect to delivering the overall benefit i.e. service quality.