The retail environment is changing at very fast pace due to intensifying competition from domestic and international retailers and a series of mergers and acquisitions. In this customer driven market there is a great need to exceed the expectations of the customers in order to position oneself on the top. Strategy is a link between the service quality and its environment which defines the path to competition. Service quality strategy defines the organisation’s scope of competition and its concept of quality by identifying and selecting and positioning the important aspects of quality it wants to compete with.

A service quality strategy provides a set of guidelines for the managers and employees of the company. Thus, it is very important for the mangers to formulate the strategic plan of the company by identifying the customer’s expectations and perceptions so that the company can achieve profitable advantage by focussing on its customers.The positive relationship of service quality to profitability, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer retention and profitability has already been proven by many researchers in various service settings. It has been argued that high service quality is the key to attain competitive advantage (Berry,1986, Reichheld, 1990).Differentiation is a marketing strategy by which a company focuses on its distinctive services and offerings in order to attain competitive advantage. Differentiation is a ‘mantra’ for attracting and retaining core customers. However, differentiation in case of services is more difficult to implement than in case of products because services include human component. Employees play an important role to implement the strategy of differentiation, be it, in the delivery of services to customers or responding to their complaints. Thus, service quality models and service quality dimensions have become topics of major research area in the marketing literature. A detailed discussion of the two most extensively used measures of service quality: SERVQUAL and RSQS have been undertaken in this study to highlight the pros and cons of using them for the measurement of service quality. The main objective of this study is to identify which one of them is the most effective measure of service quality in a retail setting. Efforts have also been made in this study to highlight the additional dimensions and/or modifications that need to be incorporated in order to develop a more refined and comprehensive scale. Although SERVQUAL scale to measure service quality as developed and refined further by Parasuraman , Berry and Zeithaml is the most widely known scale to measure service quality with its five dimensions: tangibles, reliability responsiveness, assurance and empathy, it has not been successfully adapted and validated in case of a retail setting which deals with both merchandise and service. (Pratibha A. Dabholkar, 1996) developed a new model called as RSQS with its five dimensions: physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problem solving and policy.

Evolution of SERVQUAL Model:

The British Airways in 1980 has laid the foundation to identify the service quality factors that affect customer perceived quality. The factors identified by them were care and understanding, responsiveness problem solving abilities and ability to remedy. In 1985, PZB conducted focus group interviews with consumers and in depth interview with executives in four nationally recognized service firms and identified the gaps on service marketer’s side and consumer’s side. The five gaps identified were Consumer Expectations-Management Perception gap (GAP 1) ,management perception- service quality specification gap (GAP 2), service quality specifications– service delivery gap (GAP 3), Actual service delivery-external communication about the service (GAP 4) , expected service – perceived service (GAP 5) Thus, PZB proposed a GAP model to measure perceived quality by determining the degree and direction of the difference between consumers perceptions and expectations. The greater the gap, the poorer will be the service quality. PZB identified 10 dimensions in their GAP model as responsiveness, competence, accessibility, courtesy, communication, credibility security, understanding and physical evidence with a total of 97 items. However, In 1988, PZB conducted a two stage research by analyzing the data collected from four service sectors: Banking, Credit Card, Appliance repair and maintenance and long distance telephone. After first stage of their research the items got reduced to 54 items from 97 items which further got reduced to 34 items and finally got scaled down to 22 items with five dimensions, tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy and came to be known as SERVQUAL scale. The dimensions reliability, tangibility and responsiveness of the original 10 dimensions model remained intact; however another dimension called as assurance emerged from the merger of four dimensions: competence, courtesy, creditability and security. Empathy also emerged as a part of SERVQUAL as a result of the merger of three of the 10 previous dimensions i.e comprehension, communication and accessibility. (Parasuraman A. V., 1988).The SERVQUAL scahle got wide acknowledgement from a large number of researchers because of its high scores on validity and relaibility.In 1991, Parasuraman et al. refined their work by changing the wordings of all expectations items.The revised items focused upon the expectations of the customers from “excellent companies” instead of their normative expectations e.g. one item previously worded as “Companies offering ______________ services should keep their records accurately” has been rephrased as “ Excellent comapnies offering___________ services will insist on error free records”. Apart from this, several perception items have also been rephrased and two new items were substituted for the dimensions of tangibility and assurance.However, PZB contended that there is still a need for a more refined model which can be applied to different service settings. (Parasuraman A. Z., 1991)

Empirical Researches Using SERVQUAL:

(Carman, 1990) was the first to apply SERVQUAL to retailers (tyre store).He found 9 dimensions to service quality instead of 5 and suggested modifications in the SERVQUAL scale. He also concluded that the number and composition of the service quality dimensions is probably dependant on the service setting. (Finn, 1991) applied SERVQUAL to departmental and discount store and through confirmatory factor analysis, they concluded that SERVQUAL cannot be used to assess the service quality of firms in a wide range of service categories because of a bad fit to the existing five factor structure.

(Saleh, 1992) analyzed service quality for hotel guests and management staff in the hospitality industry in Canada using the SERVQUAL model. They identified 4 dimensions for hotel guests: tangibles and reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy and 5 dimensions for management staff: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance empathy.

(Bouman, 1992)developed and tested an instrument to measure service quality in the car service industry in Netherlands By measuring perceptions minus expectations score, they identified 3 factors of service quality as customer kindness, tangibles, faith.

(Gagliano, 1994) in their study on clothing store proposed 4 dimensions of service quality namely, personal service, convenience, tangibles and reliability (Mei, 1999) determine the dimensions of service quality in the Australian hotel industry and develop a new scale of service quality in the hospitality industry, called “HOLSERV,” with three dimensions: (1) employees, (2) tangibles, and (3) reliability.

(Bahia, 2000) performed a study in Canada on a sample of retail banking customers and proposed a scale called Banking Service Quality(BSQ) which comprises of 31 items with six dimensions: effectiveness and assurance; access; price; tangibles; services portfolio and reliability. (Siu, 2001) conducted a research on service quality in warehouses in Hong Kong and found out, using an adapted instrument, that the dimensions of service quality applicable to warehouse industry are physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, policy and trustworthiness.

(Sureshchandar, 2002)conducted a study on the banking sector of India in order put light on some of the determinants of service quality that have been neglected in the past. They proposed and validated a comprehensive model and an instrument framework for measuring customer perceived service quality.

(Jabnoun, 2005) developed an empirically tested measure of service quality in context with UAE conventional and Islamic banks. The measure consists of four dimensions of service quality: personal skills, reliability, values, and image. The study also revealed that customers of Islamic banks are more concerned of personal skills and values dimensions of service quality whereas reliability and image are insignificant for them.

(Kang, 2006) empirically examined the conceptualization of service quality (both technical and functional) in mobile phone service industry in Korea. The results revealed that a two-component model yields better fit than a model concentrating on functional quality alone (such as SERVQUAL).

(Jain, 2010) developed a multidimensional scale to measure service quality and concluded that service quality in higher education comprises of twelve factors such as visual appeal, outcome, campus, reputation, input quality (students),industry interaction, support facilities, input quality (faculty), inter personal relationships, curriculum, academic facilities and processes.

(Malik and Danish, 2010) analyzed the impact of service quality on student satisfaction in higher educational institutes of Punjab province of Pakistan. They found that tangibility, assurance, reliability and empathy have a strong and significant impact on the students’ satisfaction.

(Tan Boon-In, 2010) used SERVQUAL model to evaluate the relationship between service quality dimensions and knowledge sharing in Malaysia. They found that assurance and the reliability dimensions of service quality were the two most important dimensions and had significant positive relationship with knowledge sharing.

(Shahin, 2012) proposed an integrated approach for the analysis and improvement of service quality and effectiveness in the process of recycling pavilions in Isfahan municipality. The proposed approach was structured in four steps including measuring the service quality of recycling pavilions by SERVQUAL, measuring service effectiveness using the OAE indicator, analyzing the effectiveness indicator, and improving service quality and effectiveness. The results revealed that citizens’ expectations of recycling pavilions services exceed their perceptions, and this difference was found to be greater in the empathy and responsiveness dimensions.

Although SERVQUAL scale has been widely used in a large amount of retail settings, it fails to become a standardized model applicable in different service setting in different countries because the factor structure in different settings differed from the original five factor structure. Thus, SERVQUAL failed to measure service quality of retail stores. It is also quite evident from the studies mentioned above that SERVQUAL fails to provide an effective measure of service quality in retail settings that offer a mix of goods and services such as discount stores, supermarkets, tyre industry etc. It is more applicable to pure service environment.

The RSQS Model:

A retail store experience is more comprehensive than a non retail store experience as it involves customers’ negotiation, interaction with store personnel, return and exchange of goods etc. SERVQUAL model is not very apt to measure service quality in retail stores that offer a mix of products and services (Gaur and Agrawal, 2006)(Mehta, 2000).This led to the need to add more dimensions to the existing SERVQUAL model. Thus, Dabholkar Thorpe and Rentz (1996) undertook a triangular study and conducted phenomenological interviews with three retail customers, exploratory in depth interviews with six customers and a qualitative study tracking the thought processes of three customers during an actual shopping experience at a store in USA. As a result of these investigations combined with the review of existing literature and taking SERVQUAL model as a base, a new model was developed known as RSQS model. RSQS model is a hierarchical model with its five dimensions: physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problem solving and policy. The model consists of six sub dimensions: Appearance, Convenience, Promises, Doing it right, Inspiring confidence and Courteousness/Helpfulness and a total of 28 items out of which 17 items have been adapted from SERVQUAL.SERVQUAL model served as the basis of RSQS model which is more comprehensive. The physical aspects dimension of RSQS model has a broader meaning than the Tangibles dimension of SERVQUAL. This dimension takes into account the appearance of the physical facilities as well as the convenience of the store layout and public areas. Reliability dimension of both the models is similar and measures the store’s ability to keep promises and do things right. The personal interaction dimension of RSQS incorporates in itself ‘responsiveness and assurance’ dimensions of SERVQUAL and measures customer’s perception of whether or not the store’s employees are courteous and helpful. Dabholkar et al also proposed a new dimension namely problem solving to evaluate the store’s performance on the basis of the ability to handle potential problems. Another new dimension called as policy takes into account factors such as parking facility, store hours, credit card acceptance, availability of high quality merchandises etc. The RSQS model used a five point rating scale where 1 stands for strongly disagree and 5 stands for strongly agree.

Empirical Researches using RSQS Model:

(Boshoff, 1997)in support of the study by Dabholkar, Thorpe, and Rentz (1996) conducted a study on department stores, specialty stores and hypermarkets in South Africa and concluded that RSQ scale was valid in the context of South African retail.

Mehta, Lalwani and Han (2000) applied RSQS model to Supermarkets and electronic goods stores in Singapore. The results of the study supported the validity of RSQS in context of supermarket but the model was found to be a misfit to measure service quality in context of electronic goods store.

(Vazquez, 2000) conducted a study on a sample of selected chain of supermarkets in north of Spain by using a 28 item scale. The results of the study led to a decrease in the number of dimensions to four namely: physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction and policy. Problem solving was proposed as a sub dimension to reliability. They also developed an 18 item scale and called it as CALSUPER scale capable of measuring quality of both goods and services.

Siu and Cheung (2001) studied the service quality of a Departmental store chain in Hong Kong by using the original RSQS model. The findings revealed that RSQS model which is developed and validated in US can be applied in Hong Kong too but with some modifications. They found that physical appearance and policy had the greatest impact on the overall service quality and on future consumption respectively. They found RSQ to be a 6 dimensional factor namely, personal interaction, physical appearance, promises, policy, convenience and problem solving.

(Kim, 2002) found that perception of RSQ is different for US and Korean customers of discount stores. They found personal attention to be a sub dimension under problem solving and the policy dimension was deleted due to low reliability score. Overall they concluded RSQ to be a 3 dimensional factor namely, physical aspects, reliability and problem solving

(Siu and Chow , 2003) conducted a study on Japanese supermarkets in Hong Kong. The finding showed that problem solving dimension is a part of personal interaction construct and came up with a new dimension called trustworthiness.

(Parikh, 2005) found that the reliability dimension of RSQS is perceived to be most important dimension than the other dimensions of RSQS especially in context of developing countries. Further he also stated that the highest perceived service gap lays in the policies of retail stores particularly the parking facilities provided by them.

(Parikh D. , 2006) conducted a study on selected retail stores of Gujarat, India by using RSQS scale. The findings revealed that retail service quality is a four- dimensional factor namely, reliability, personal interaction, policy and problem solving

(Kaul, 2007) conducted a study on large format apparel store in Bangalore, India. She found that RSQS has limited diagnostic application and is inappropriate for application in Indian retail. In her study she found support for policy, physical aspects and problem solving dimension of RSQS. Two of the limitations of the study are small sample and no attempt was made to modify the scale

(Kaur, 2010)in their study on shopping malls in India concluded that six important factors (value for money, customer delight, information security, credibility store charisma and product excellence) determine customer perception towards shopping malls in India.

(Das,Kumar and Saha, 2010)in their study on department stores, discount stores, and supermarkets in Almaty city, Kazakhstan found that RSQS items are appropriate in measuring RSQ in the case of all Commonwealth Independent States (CIS) countries having similar outlook.

(Torlak, Uzkurt and Ozmen 2010) conducted a study on Supermarkets in Turkey and found support for four dimensions namely reliability, policy, physical aspects and personal interaction. The fifth factor, problem solving was found as a sub-dimension of personal interaction

(Bhaskar and Shekhar, 2011) in their study on apparel retail in Hyderabad, India found RSQS to be a four-dimensional factor consisting of physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problem solving.

(Azhagan and Nagarajan, 2011) made an effort to measure Retail Service Quality of Organized Retail sector in Trichy. They investigated the discrepancy between customers’ expectations and perceptions towards the quality of service offered by the organized retail sector. The results revealed that most of the customers prefer Organized Retail sector because of more Tangibles and Empathy towards its customers. In order to retain and attract new customers, the organized retail sector should improve customer’s service level and should provide assurance towards its customer.

(Tanwar S and Kaushik, 2012) examined the influence of service quality on behavioural intentions of customers in organised food retail sector. The results of the study revealed that “appearance” is the most influential factor followed by the others factors of RSQS instrument by Dabholkar et al. (Shravanthi and Pauline, 2013) analyzed customer’s perception on the service quality of Spencer’s .The results of the study revealed that personal interaction and physical and policy attributes are the factors majorly influencing the service quality of the store.

(Deb and Lomo-David, 2014)used a comparative evaluation model to compare retail stores(supermarkets) across several RSQ dimensions, validated and tested RSQ model in the context of Indian supermarkets and explored the existence of RSQ gap by studying the difference between customers’ perception and expectations by adapting the AHP methodology to prioritize RSQ dimensions and to compute a gap analysis

SERVQUAL VS RSQS:

SERVQUAL Model:

Even though, SERVQUAL is the most widely adapted measure of service quality, many researchers such as (Peter, Churchill andBrown, 1993), (Babakus and Boller, 1992), (Babakus and Mangold, 1992), (Cronin and Taylor, 1992), (Boulding, Kalra, Staelin and Zeithaml, 1993), (Oliver and Bearden , 1985) do not support the view of PZB to measure service quality as the gap between perceptions and expectations of the consumers. It has also been argued that the GAP model has led to an ambiguity between the two concepts: Service quality and customer satisfaction (Ladhari, 2008). Besides, Customers do not use expectations to evaluate services as there is no reasonable tool to measure expectations. (Buttle, 1995).Cronin and Taylor (1992) contended that the model is based on disconfirmation model rather than attitudinal model. Service delivery process plays an important role in differentiating an organization from others and thus achieving a competitive position in the market. Process capability and execution are the two major factors that can lead to improved performance because they have a positive relationship with consumer satisfaction and service quality. (Roth and Jackson, 1995).However, SERVQUAL model focuses on the process of service rather than on the outcome of service (Babakus and Boller, 1992). Carman (1990) pointed out the SERVQUAL had good stability, but the five factors are not neutral indicators for different service sectors, and isn’t universally applicable. The negative items in the scale and perceptions and expectations score create confusion among the respondents which creates hindrance in the comprehensive measurement of all five dimensions of service quality. (Babakus and Boller, 1992). A high degree of correlation has been found amongst the five dimensions. (Nadiri and Hussain, 2005, Buttle F, 1995).

Cronin and Taylor (1992) have made an effort to overcome all the above mentioned limitations by carrying out research in four industries (banking, pest control, dry cleaning and fast food) which resulted in the development of a revised model based on “performance only” measure called as SERVPERF. It was found that this measure explained more of the variance in an overall measure of SQ than SERVQUAL. Researchers (Boulding et al. 1993 have supported this measure of service quality which thus led to its wide acceptance.

RSQS Model:

RSQS model was developed by Dabholkar et al. as a hierarchy based model to measure service quality in retail firms that offer a mix of products and services. This model unlike SERVQUAL measures the perception of service quality only once and is not based on disconfirmation paradigm. But this measure also has its inherent limitations. As, it is evident from literature, there is a serious disagreement regarding the number of items to be used in various retail service settings. Also, it is not a generalized model applicable in all areas of retail. Researchers have argued that the effect of factors such as environment, price, distance, promotion etc has not been not considered. The model has operational problems as it is not very successfully applied to find out the relation between service quality and other variables (Martinez and Martinez, 2010).RSQS model involves a very complicated statistical procedure because of the presence of dimensions and sub dimensions (Martinez and M , 2010) The hierarchical structure lacks empirical evidence (Ladhari, 2008).

In order to overcome the limitations of the model, it would be appropriate to suggest that the model should be adapted for further research only after it has been modified with regard to the cultural and demographic characteristics of the target market so as to get valid results.

The need for Modified Scale:

An instrument that has been tested and validated in the West will not be appropriate for Asian Markets without modifications (Cui, Lewis and Park, 2003).The scales that have been developed for a specific country or context might not be suitable for other countries because of cultural differences .Researchers have also argued about the difference in the response style such as item bias, the wording and layout of the items of different countries has led to the need for development of a country specific scale (Diamantopoulos, 2006). As both SERVQUAL and RSQS scales have been developed in USA, researchers (Brian C. Imrie, 2002), (François A. Carrillat, 2007) have questioned the applicability of both these scales in other countries without modifications because of cultural differences. A more culturally sensitive scale would measure the influence of culture on service quality more comprehensively.

CONCLUSION:

It is quite evident from the above discussion that neither SERVQUAL nor RSQS scales is a universal measure of service quality. There are problems associated with their factor structure, dimensions and sub dimensions. The two scales do not provide valid and reliable results in different cultural environments. Thus, researchers have suggested that culture and sector specific modifications should be made before adapting the scales for future research. Continued refinement of the SERVQUAL and RSQS on the basis of review of literature and experts advice would provide a guidance for further addition and deletion of certain items so that a more valid, reliable, comprehensive and culturally bounded tool to measure service quality could be identified.

Executive Summary:

Theory and previous researches on service quality are synthesized and the need for a better measure of service quality is proposed. The concept of service quality is described and then the two most popular measures of service quality i.e. SERVQUAL and RSQS are reviewed one by one. Firstly, a framework is presented based on prior research that highlights evolution of the SERVQUAL model and linkages among the stages of evolution. Then, several empirical researches using SERVQUAL as a tool to measure service quality i.e. RSQS model is focused upon. The development of the model is then supported by some empirical researches using the model. After a detailed review of both the models, the pros and cons of using them as a measure of service quality have been highlighted. This resulted into the need for a modified scale. The paper is ended with conclusion and an idea to give a direction for future research.

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Received on 23.03.2017 Modified on 11.04.2017

Asian J. Management; 2017; 8(3):774-780.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2017.00122.6