Keyword

Customer perception, customer expectation, service effectiveness, frontline, retail, store loyalty

Abstract

Retail Industry is likely to be the next big thing for services in this decade. The industry is very diverse, with several sub-segments, each displaying its own unique characteristics. The retail players need to be excellent in every facet of operations as the market is highly competitive at every level and re-defining itself every day. It is mainly a service oriented industry so employee’s especially frontline sales people who do have a major role in customers purchasing decision are the key people to its success. Now –a- days the main USP of any industry especially service industry is satisfied customer. The main focus of this research is to determine the department store service effectiveness. This is achieved by means of assessment of the customer expectation and customer perception of the service effectiveness rendered by frontline sales personnel. For the purpose of the conduction of the study both primary and secondary data was used. The questionnaire used for primary data collection was based on a modified fifteen-item, seven –point scale that measures customer expectations and customer perception of service effectiveness developed by Parasuraman et.al. (1988). The secondary data was collected using various published and unpublished paper and electronic sources. For analysis and interpretation of data univariate, bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques like factor analysis and reliability analysis were used .The interpretation of the results showed


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