1Reader in Business Administration, N.M.S.S.V.N. College, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
2Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Faculty of Business & Economics, University of Hawassa, Awassa, Ethiopia
Online published on 11 September, 2015.
The key determinant of business performance in service industry is the service quality. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study the retail service quality in Tamilnadu. The instrument used to measure service quality is the one developed by Dabholkar et.al., (1996). This paper identifies five important dimensions in retail service quality, namely, ‘Personal Interaction’, ‘Reliability’, ‘Policy’, ‘Physical Assets’ and ‘Problem Solving’. The service quality gap is measured by the difference between customers’ perception and expectations on five dimensions in retail service quality. The one way analysis of variance has been used to find out the significant differences in five major cities regarding the service quality gap and also the association between the profile of customers and their service quality gap. The results are discussed and conclusions are drawn. Coimbatore and Chennai are better in providing retail service quality than the other cities in Tamilnadu. The important criterion variables on the retail service quality gap are level of education, occupation and age of the customers.
