Title: Service Quality (Servqual) and its Effect on Customer Satisfaction in

Retailing

Authors: C.N. Krishna Naik, Swapna Bhargavi Gantasala, Gantasala V.

Prabhakar
Publisher: European Journal of Social Sciences

Date of Publication: 2010

Number of Pages: 13

Reviewer Name: Tsion Tesfaye

ID:
Section:

Date: NOV 2021

The abstract mainly talks about the conclusion and mere aim of the study which excellently
stated while at the same time it gives brief information why this research is different from other
similar ones.

As per the guidelines of writing research it is acceptable to write an abstract in the range of 250
to 300 words but the authors of this journal wrote only 224 word which is below the acceptable
range. Subjects like problem statement, significance and clear objectives could have plenty of
room in this part of the study.

The journal aims at measuring the influences of SERVQUAL in Retailing Customer Satisfaction
taken as the effective outcome measure. Specific purposes are (1) to describe applied of service
quality (servqual) dimension in retail Business (2) to know service quality (servqual) dimensions
that make customers satisfied, and (3) to know service quality (servqual) dimensions that are
dominant in influencing customer satisfaction. Also covered under the journal was the
assessment of the impact of Customer Satisfaction and Repurchase Intention on positive word of
mouth communication. The organization selected was Pantaloon’s retail. Further, the researcher
selected competitors to Pantaloon’s in each format to carry out a comparative journal

Primary data was mainly used in the form of structured questionnaire that too account
SERVQUAL dimensions such as Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy,
other dimensions into account.

Customers have highest expectations on the promptness of service, accuracy of transactions,

security issues and concerns; the customer’s lowest expectations are cleanliness, ambience, etc.
It must however be noted here that this rating is a comparative assessment and therefore this
dimension of service quality scores lower in comparison to promptness, security and other
security related issues. The dimension ‘Staff performance’ in our informal interviews was
reported to be satisfactory by the respondents and therefore did not expect substantial
improvements in their performance.

Customers reported highest satisfaction for promptness and speed of service along with accuracy
of transactions at cash counters. They were also satisfied with the processing of transactions and
efforts to expedite processing whenever the traffic at the counters increased. The lowest
satisfaction levels were reported at the willingness of staff to assist customers in accessing
facilities, assortments, information on products, stock positions etc

The authors attempted to give a new alternative of measuring importance but as the authors
mentioned not it only provides successful measurement of importance but also performance. The
new approach eliminated most shortcomings faced by previous measurement techniques. Some
presentations of figures show clear differences between previous measurements and a new one
for example figure 3 and 4 show how the new measurement technique spread the importance
scores relative to the former measurement technique which clustered scores of importance.
Which is the primary objective of this paper.

Summary
Customer expectations and perceptions are subjective and in a perpetual state of flux and change.
As a result, the conclusions may be applied to a certain time period, market, and economic
conditions. This limitation could most likely be overcome or mitigated by a longitudinal study.
The research is also limited to the Indian context, with Hyderabad as the focal point. Geo-
demographic factors may have a significant impact on customer expectations and perceptions.
It's also worth noting that the zone of tolerance may differ from one consumer to the next. The
current study did not look at this variation.

Overall, while this article highlighted one of the challenges of SERVQUAL, the lack of detail
regarding the author methods for identifying the key findings is frustrating. It is not clear why
certain findings were selected and used over others. How the author chose the mechanisms they
studied is also not clear. However, the author conclusions and recommendations set the
foundation for research that hopefully will be more effective than the work of Sureshchander,
Rajendran, & Kamalanabhan, 2001; Berry, 1980.
Overall this article isn’t very straightforward in the beginning and it’s not until the second page
that you realize where the article is headed. In order to have more people be engaged and read
the whole article it needs a new, more concise introduction.

The introduction, literature review, theoretical framework and methods section lack clear
structure and components and thorough explanation of the research process and its limitations.
However, this study includes evidence of a very thoughtful statistical analysis and presents
important results