Abstract
Service quality research continues to represent one of the major tenets of Services Marketing, but there continues to be limited research in the field outside of Developed, Western markets. In order to advance the knowledge of service quality in non-western markets, the focus of this paper is to examine one particular field of service quality research, retail service quality, in the former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The testing of a model of retail service quality, using empirical survey data collected in these three recent members of the European Union, indicate support that the retail service quality construct both aligns and differs, across the three countries. The implication of these similarities and differences are important from two perspectives. The first is the appropriateness of extending Western developed marketing scales and measures within newly emerging, and catching up states. The second implication, which is important to retail practice, questions the position of treating these three countries, known collectively as the Baltic states as a homogenous market. Additional implications to retail practice and future academic research studies are also discussed.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONThe extant literature on service quality is vast, (see for example, references in Cronin and Taylor 1992, Buttle, 1996, Zeithaml, 2000, Seth, Deshmukh, and Vrat, 2005, Ladhari, 2008) there is limited research that has attempted to develop measures for this construct within the catching-up states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
The extant literature on service quality is vast, there is limited research that has attempted to develop measures for this construct within the catching-up states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
The research begins with a summary review of the retail service quality literature, followed by a discussion of the region of study, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and their respective retail environments
Summary
The extant literature on service quality is vast, (see for example, references in Cronin and Taylor 1992, Buttle, 1996, Zeithaml, 2000, Seth, Deshmukh, and Vrat, 2005, Ladhari, 2008) there is limited research that has attempted to develop measures for this construct within the catching-up states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The research begins with a summary review of the retail service quality literature, followed by a discussion of the region of study, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and their respective retail environments. A simple retail service quality model is presented, followed by a review of an empirical study of consumers perceptions of retail performance as it relates to the retail service quality construct within these markets. The concluding sections of the study discuss the similarities and differences in the findings, and discusses the implications of these findings to future retail service quality practice, and Perspective of Retail Service Quality: Findings From the Retail Baltic States.
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