A Review of the Service Quality Scales of Retail Stores

WANG Shucui
School of Medicine and Health Management, Hangzhou Normal University, P.R.China, 310036
wangsc2003@126.com

：
Abstract Retail stores belong to service industry, which offer a hybrid of goods and service, thus retail
product management not only have the common characters of goods quality but also have the special
characters of services quality. This paper focused on the two main quality scales of the retailers:
SERVQUAL and RSQS, the former is prevalent in universal business service management, the latter is
developed special for retail stores. The applying situations and the limitations of the two scales are
concluded respectively. In addition, the paper tracked the domestic research of the retail service quality
management, and pointed out the future direction.
Keywords: Retail store, Service quality, SERVQUAL, RSQS

1 Introduction

Retail businesses are services businesses (Berry, 1986) [1], thus is the main study objectives and testing
base by the scholars in the management theory research area, the most of service quality concepts and
measurement methods are developed on the base of the retail stores study. With the progress of service
quality research work, different settings of service industry have gotten a specific attention in-depth,
both in conceptual models and in measurement methods. Besides SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al.1988)
as the mainstream method, the measurement methods of service quality, is complemented by
SERVPERF(Cronin, Taylor, 1992) which has been admitted and thought better in reliability and validity
through measuring "perceived service" without considering "expected service", applying the same 22
question items of the SERVQUAL scales at the service perception part. Additionally, Brown et al (1993)
thought that the SERVQUAL scales are prone to create the third variable, and presented the
Non-difference scale. The above two service quality measurement methods are both based on
SERVQUAL, nothing is different except the questionnaire content is partly adjusted. In the retail sector,
besides the application of SERVQUAL approach, Dabholkar et al (1996) has developed a specialized
measurement method-RSQS (Retail Service Quality Scale). The writer discovered that SERVQUAL and
RSQS are the most widely used measurement tools in retail service management area through the
literature review, this paper will put the emphasis on SERVQUAL and RSQS, review the respective
applying situations and limitations, sum up the domestic literatures on the retail service quality
measurement, and propose the future research directions.

2 SERVQUAL Scale

Based on the “perceived service quality”, the scholars have done much exploratory study on measuring
the service quality. The first study on the service quality characteristics was conducted by British
Airways in 1980, the study found some factors that influenced customer perceived quality, which
included care and understanding, responsiveness, problem-solving abilities, ability to remedy.
Subsequently, A. Parasuraman, Leonard L Berry, Valarie A. Zeithaml (in short, PBZ) (1985) presented
the gaps-model and the 10 factors that affect the service quality, which in details are responsiveness,
competence, accessibility, courtesy, communication, credibility, security, understanding, the physical
evidence, containing 97 test items totally. At the same time they proposed that further empirical research
is needed about these factors and project. In 1988, through two stages of empirical research, PBZ
condensed the scales pool from 97 items to 54 items, and later reduced to 34 items, finally resulted in 22
items 5 dimensions, the five dimensions are: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance
(competence, courtesy, credibility, security) and empathy (comprehension, communication,

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accessibility), thus formed a widely used SERVQUAL scale. The scale is considered having good
reliability and validity, and can be used to improve service quality. Also, it can examine the service
quality trend; it can assess the particular enterprise’s service quality even each dimension and the final
quality; It can make it clear that the different dimensions have different influence on quality perception.
Some scholars have presented some questions about this scale yet, such as 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. Later, PBZ (1991) improved and re-evaluated the scale,
changed the description of some items, for example, replaced "should" of "would" at expectation part of
the questionnaire, changed the statement sentences from negative tone into positive tone, although
having done much improvements, PBZ still emphasized the SERVQUAL scale is the basic "skeleton"
but not the perfect one, the scale should be modified when being applied in different service settings.
SERVQUAL was developed by measuring the service quality in diverse setting, including an appliance
repair and maintenance firm, several retail banks, a long distance telephone provider, a security broker,
and credit card companies, as the authors intended to develop and design a scale which could be used
for measuring service quality across service environments. Since its developing, SERVQUAL has been
subsequently adapted and used in a variety of settings like the hospital (Babakus, Mangold 1989), bank
(Cronin and Taylor 1992; Spreng and Singh 1993), business school placement center, tyre store, dental
school patient clinic and acute care hospital (Carman 1990), discount and departmental stores (Finn and
Lamb 1991; Teas 1993; Dabholkar et al. 1996) and others. Though the scale has only a limited
application in retail store context, it is testified to some shortness and limitations. Table 1 shows the
application and test result in the retail settings by empirical research. As is evident from the review of
studies that SERVQUAL fails to provide an accurate and effective measure of service quality in retail
settings such as discount stores, and apparel specialty stores that offer a mix of goods and services. An
interesting feature that emerges from the above review is that there is a wide variety of empirical factor
structures that can be obtained. These factor structures vary in terms of the number of interpretable
factors, which consistently differ from the five-factor structure proposed by PBZ(1988; 1991). The
considerable variation in empirical factor structures reported in the literature raises doubts over the use
of the SERVQUAL instrument in retail research, much refinement was needed while applying
SERVQUAL in specific companies and industries. Similar concerns were voiced by Dabholkar, Thorpe
and Rentz (1996) when they noted that SERVQUAL which was developed primarily to assess service
quality for pure service environments, failed to measure service quality for retail stores.

Table 1 Summary of Empirical Researches Using SERVQUAL

authors year setting Key findings
Carman 1990 Tyre retailers Nine factors of service quality were identified using principal
axis factor analysis.
Finn,Lamb 1991 Department Confirmatory factor analysis did not provide a good fit to the
stores and proposed five-factor structure of SERVQUAL for either of
discount department stores and discount stores
stores
Guiry,Huthinson,Weitz 1992 Retail store Original 22 item SERVQUAL was modified to a 51 item
instrument by dropping 7 items and adding 36 new items.
Exploratory factor analysis revealed seven dimensions.
Gagliano,Kathryn 1994 Apparel Identified four factors two of which had no correspondence to
Bishop specialty SERVQUAL
stores

3 RSQS Scale

Realizing the need for investigating the dimensions of service quality in retail stores and developing a
scale to measure retail service quality, Dabholkar et al. (1996) conducted phenomenological interviews,
exploratory depth interviews, and used qualitative study techniques for tracking the thought processes of
customers during an actual shopping experience at a store. The authors combined the findings from

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these qualitative investigations with the existing literature and SERVQUAL, to form a basis for
developing RSQS. Five new dimensions are concluded, which are Physical aspects, Reliability, Personal
interaction, Problem solving and Policy. As an improvement over SERVQUAL the Physical aspects
dimension as proposed in RSQS had a broader meaning as compared to the Tangibles dimension of
SERVQUAL. The dimension included the appearance of the physical facilities as well as the
convenience of store layout and public areas. Reliability dimension on the other hand is similar to the
Reliability dimension of SERVQUAL and is concerned with the store’s ability to keep promises and do
things right. The Personal interaction dimension in RSQS was a combination of the SERVQUAL
dimensions of Responsiveness and Assurance and measured customer perceptions of whether or not the
store has courteous and helpful employees who inspire confidence and trust. Problem solving was a new
dimension proposed by the authors that assesses the store’s performance on the basis of its ability to
handle potential problems. Problem solving dimension was separate from the personal interaction
dimension as service recovery was recognized to be a critical part of good service. The new dimension
of Policy represent all the aspects of service quality that are directly influenced by store policy, such as
high-quality merchandise, convenient parking, convenient store hours, acceptance of major credit cards,
and availability of a store credit card. Dabholkar et al. (1996) believed that retail service quality had a
hierarchical factor structure, where overall service quality be viewed as a higher or second order-factor.
RSQS included 28 items, 17 of which came from the existing SERVQUAL scale and the remaining 11
items from the literatures and qualitative research, 5 items of SERVQUAL were deemed inappropriate
and dropped. Dabholkar et al. (1996) tested the RSQS with US department store customers. The scale
was found to possess strong validity and reliability, the scale was suited for studying retail businesses
that offer a mix of services and goods. The instrument could serve as a diagnostic tool that would allow
retailers to determine service areas that were weak and needed attention. Since the instrument is
relatively recent, only a few studies measuring service quality of retail business, as is shown in Table 2

Table 2 Summary of Empirical Researches Using RSQS

authors year setting Key findings
Boshoff and 1997 Department stores, RSQS found to be a valid and reliable measure of retail service
Terblanche speciality stores and quality.
hypermarkets in
South Africa
Mehta,Lalwani 2000 Supermarket and RSQS scale was a better measure of service quality for a
and Han electronic goods supermarket retailer than for an electronic goods retailer.
retailers in Singapore
Kim and Jin 2001 Discount stores in Five items designed to measure Policy found to be unreliable in
US and Korea both countries. Personal interaction and Problem solving
combined into a single construct named Personal attention.
Measurement equivalence did not exist across US and Korean
samples. RSQS could not be viewed as a reliable and valid
measure for cross-cultural comparisons.
Siu and cheung 2001 Departmental store Three items deleted in a pretest. Five factor structure of RSQS
chain in Hong Kong could not be identified; instead six service quality dimensions
emerged from the study.
Siu and Chow 2003 Japanese Five items deleted due to low Cronbach alpha values. Problem
supermarket in Hong Solving dimension as given in the retail service quality scale
Kong was integrated into the Personal Interaction construct while a
new factor emerged from the study, called Trustworthiness.
Kaul 2005 Specialty apparel RSQS dimensions not valid in India. Indian retailing found to
stores in India have a four dimension structure. At the subdimensions level, a
four factor structure instead of six factors was supported.
：
Source Sanjaya S. Gaur, Richa Agrawal, Service Quality Measurement in Retail Store Context: A Review of
Advances Made Using SERVQUAL and RSQS. The Marketing Review, 2006, 6 317-330：
Through the RSQS scale application in different countries, its applicability has clear limitations. In the

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light of the many limitations that are inherent in the application and administration of RSQS, it would be
right to conclude that different retail settings are perceived as providing different sets of services to the
customers. Hence, it would be appropriate to suggest that the RSQS be adapted, modified and validated
in the context of the specific retail setting being studied. Recent research suggests that culture may play
a significant role in determining how customers perceive service quality. Researchers have started
exploring the differences in customer evaluations of service quality across nations and across cultures.
Kim and Jin (2001) in their study of US and Korean customers gave us a good example.

4 The Domestic Research

Service quality research basically is at the introduction and assimilation stage in our country,. Innovative
research results from some famous scholars including Professor Wang Chunxiao, Professor Fan
Xiucheng,and so on. Professor Wang Chunxiao (1999) proposed that the services quality is composed of
Environmental quality, Technical quality, Emotional quality, Relationship quality and Communication
quality through empirical study on the hospitals. As a well-known scholar of Nankai University,
Professor Fan Xiucheng(1999) presented interactive quality conception, He thought service quality
is embodied by technical quality and interactive quality. In addition, many scholars carried out
exploratory studies on hotels industry (Zhu Hang, et al, 1999; Wang Chunxiao, 1999; Zhang Lili, 1995;
Dang Zhongcheng, etc., 2002). As the service industries themselves are different, their findings can not
be applied to the retail industry wholly. Some domestic scholars have focused on China's retail service
quality, and achieved some results. For example, Su Qin,et al (2007) published the paper "an empirical
study on customer service quality and relationship quality based on the interactive model”, clearly
discussed the relation and influence between the interaction quality and customer service quality, but no
scale is formed. QIAN Liping, et al (2005) revised the RSQS for the Chinese consumer and retail stores,
considering the consumer characteristics and china cultural background, they retained five dimensions
of the original model, but the scale items have been adjusted, the number of variables was reduced from
28 to 22, of which 19 variables came from RSQS, and added three new variables. Zhao Hui (2007)
introduced 24 variables in the paper "an empirical research on Retail Service Quality Evaluation" for the
case of supermarket service.

5 The Future Research

As is evident from the above discussion neither SERVQUAL nor RSQS provide a reliable and valid
measure of retail service quality. There are problems regarding the factor structure and sub-dimensions
of the two scales. Service quality researchers have suggested scale adaptation to take care of contextual
variations both in terms of the industry setting and the country of study, given a difference in cultural
and environmental factors. Depending on the context, adaptation of the service quality scale may not be
simple and the specific application should be examined in considerable detail. Continued refinement of
the SERVQUAL and RSQS on the basis of qualitative research and an extensive review of literature
would help in identifying items that need to be considered for inclusion or deletion in both scales. The
modified scales could then be subjected to further testing by applying them across retail formats using
cross-cultural samples(Jungki Lee, et al., 2007). values and culture affect the service quality dimensions,
and the SERVQUAL is thought not to fit Taiwan customers well, because the interpersonal relationship
as a part of Taiwanese life, is not been fully take into account in the SERVQUAL model (Imrie, et al.,
2002).This would not only help researchers in developing a new, more reliable, culturally bounded and
accurate measure of retail service quality, which can then be applied globally but would also help
managers in making a more accurate assessment of service quality of retail stores across nations
supporting different cultures. Future research needs to proceed along the suggested guidelines if
research in retail service quality is to be rendered meaningful. In addition, because the service quality
measurement is related to many subjects, such as psychological measurement science, statistics,
marketing, management and other disciplines of knowledge, it is necessary to study and develop the

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scales from a methodological perspective.

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