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A measure of service quality for retail stores: Scale development and validation

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Abstract

Current measures of service quality do not adequately capture customers’ perceptions of service quality for retail stores (i.e., stores that offer a mix of goods and services). A hierarchical factor structure is proposed to capture dimensions important to retail customers based on the retail and service quality literatures as well as three separate qualitative studies. Confirmatory factor analysis based on the partial disaggregation technique and cross-validation using a second sample support the validity of the scale as a measure of retail service quality. The implications of this Retail Service Quality Scale for practitioners, as well as for future research, are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

    Pratibha A. Dabholkar, Dayle I. Thorpe & Joseph O. Rentz

Authors
  1. Pratibha A. Dabholkar
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  2. Dayle I. Thorpe
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  3. Joseph O. Rentz
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Additional information

She received her Ph.D. from Georgia State University. Her research interests include attitude and choice models, service quality and customer satisfaction issues, technology in service delivery, and business-to-business relationships. She has published articles in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Complaining Behavior, Journal of Health Care Management, International Journal of Research in Marketing, andPsychology and Marketing, as well as in various conference proceedings.

She also holds a B.S. and an M.S. from Florida State University and an M.B.A. from Mercer University. Her research interests include services marketing, service quality, retailing, and manager-employee relationships. Her publications include articles in theJournal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Complaining Behavior, The Service Industries Journal, and in various conference proceedings.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. His research interests include cohort analysis, measurement issues, generalizability studies, and customer satisfaction. He has published articles in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, as well as in several conference proceedings.

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Dabholkar, P.A., Thorpe, D.I. & Rentz, J.O. A measure of service quality for retail stores: Scale development and validation. JAMS 24, 3–16 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02893933

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