Measuring Retail Service Quality using RSQS and Validating RSQS in the context

Abstract

One of the mainareas of marketing research has been the study of service quality. Theincreasing growth of service sector has drawn many academicians into the fieldof service quality, which provides varied thoughts of evaluating the service quality.The intent of this research was to understand the customers in emerging retailmarket like India and to test the applicability of RSQS construct in SouthIndia. There was limited replication studies testing the reliability andvalidity of the retail service quality scale attempted in India particularly inSouth India. The validity of Dabholkar et al. (1996) retail service quality modelhas to be assessed in South Indian retail market. This research furtherprovided a complete understanding of the retail service quality scale and theconstruct and defines relevant factors of the construct within a market thathad not previously been successfully studied in this field. There were manystudies that explore the service quality dimensions affecting service qualityin retail stores in India, but only few studies had investigated theapplicability of retail service quality scale (RSQS) in India. The retailservice quality in India was under researched, and in particular theapplicability of Retail Service Quality Scale (RSQS) model. Consequently, thisresearch strives to close a gap existing within the retail service qualityresearch literature by extending the study of the construct to emerging retailregions like India. The objectiveswere framed and the empirical data using established retail service qualityscale items as questionnaire were collected and the findings were supported theliterature that retail service quality was best measured using a multi-factorinstrument. With respect to the factor structure of the construct, the researchfindings indicated that in South Indian retail market, Retail Service QualityScale exhibited acceptable level of reliability settings and shows good contentand discriminant validity. Retail Service Quality was best represented by thethree factors of Physical Aspects, Personal Interaction and Problem Solving. This researchwork had advanced the knowledge on measuring retail service quality using RSQSand analyzing the validity of service quality -construct, It also contributedin understanding the Retail Service Quality Scale (RSQS) and its factorstructure and testing the scale in retail market like South India. Thus, from atheoretical point of view, this research had tested for content validity of howwell an established scale instrument measure retail service quality in SouthIndia.This research isbelieved to be the first replication study of Retail Service Quality Scale(RSQS) in South India, thus this research serves as a voice for futurereplication studies.