Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences
School of Agricultural and Food Sciences
Department of Consumer Science
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
Service quality, as an indication of a store’s service excellence, has been a popular topic of investigation for quite some time. From a retail perspective, an insatiable need to prosper in a competitive marketplace probably explains why certain elements of a store’s marketing mix are attended to more meticulously. This research implemented an established SERVQUAL scale and involved 296 respondents to investigate customers' judgment of the service quality in a specific context, that is, appliance sales in prominent department stores in Pretoria. Respondents’ service quality judgments revealed a more basic assessment of the service offering in the context of this research. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed a collapse of the original five-dimensional scale to two dimensions, labelled ‘supportiveness’ and ‘impressiveness’ respectively. Customers’ positive service quality judgments were, however, contradicted by pertinent shortcomings identified by managers of the stores during in-store surveys. These shortcomings were confirmed in sales personnel’s suggestions for the optimisation of the service offering to enhance informed, responsible buying decisions through narratives in a projective technique. The research concluded that consumers in emerging economies seem more tolerant of ineffectiveness in the marketplace, probably due to lower expectations. In order to improve the situation, retail needs augment their service offering in terms of elements of the marketing mix that would benefit their customers, that is, to set the pace in terms of consumer education. The potential role of sales personnel would be to facilitate consumer decisions on the premise that they are encouraged and given the opportunity to be trained and that conditions in the stores are amended to discourage competition among sales personnel to excel in sales to the detriment of the wellbeing of their customers
Contact person: Prof AC Erasmus.
|
