Service Quality: The Cornerstone of Customer-Centric Retail Strategy for Supermarket Retailers in India

Abstract

The Supermarket retailers in India are on a rollercoaster ride with competition intensifying in the industry and a plethora of retail strategies making their roads to success even more complicated. In this day and age of increasing retail competition, though competitive advantage seems to be the only way out, choice of appropriate retail strategy has become an daunting task. The objective of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework on various strategic alternatives available to supermarket retailers in India and facilitate them to choose the best strategies to ride on. This paper draws heavily from existing literature on retail strategies and competitive advantage. Having analyzed the non-applicability of the competitor-centric retail strategy in Indian supermarkets, the research proposes the application of customer-centric retail strategy for enabling supermarket retailers in India attain competitive advantage. Adding strength to the research is the result derived from interviews of supermarket managers and customers; and also of a pilot study .The work involves identification of research constructs and hypothesis for the proposed framework. The framework also contributes heavily to literature on competitive advantage by emphasizing on effective customer-centric strategies and specific performance outcomes that supermarket retailers could be enjoying riding on these strategies.