Impact of Service Quality on Apparel Retail Customer Satisfaction-A Study of Select Metropolitan City Hyderabad

Abstract

The Indian Retail Industry is witnessing a rapid transformation and is the fastest growing sector contributing 10 percent of the country’s GDP. Indian retail market is estimated to grow from $427 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach $637 billion by 2015 (Srivastava 2008). India became the prime destination for the global retailers because of favorable demographics, high disposable income levels, changing life styles and increased customer awareness.  Indian apparel retailing is the country’s largest opportunity for the organized retailers after food retailing. The fast pace of the Indian retail industry presents many companies with a host of daily challenges. In today’s competitive environment and with the growing importance of services, delivering high quality services has become the basic retailing strategy. The present paper studies the impact of service quality on apparel retail customer satisfaction and also indentifies the critical factors of service quality from customer’s perspective. The sample consists of 250 respondents from the Metropolitan City Hyderabad which is one of the fastest growing metropolitan cities in India a structured questionnaire RSQS (Retail Service Quality Scale) was administered for data collection. Secondary data was collected from research databases, reports, journal articles etc. SPSS 17.0 was used for statistical analysis. The results will help the Retail service managers to plan and design their service strategies. The study identifies the critical of factors of Apparel Retail Service Quality and evaluates the impact of service quality on Retail Customer Satisfaction. The results helps the retailers to focus on critical areas of service where to improve, where to modify and where to cut down and enables them to take effective service strategies.