The measurement of consumer satisfaction with selected elements of the total retail experience: An exploratory study of fast food and supermarket retailers

N S Terblanche,C Boshoff

doi:10.4102/sajems.v4i1.2632

Abstract

Although attempts have been made to identify some of the dimensions of retail shopping experience, these have been largely fragmented and uncoordinated. No attempt has yet been made to combine the efforts of many retailing students into a comprehensive model that accurately describes the total retailing experience. Also, very little is known about the relationship between the individual dimensions of retail shopping and customer satisfaction. This study attempts to reduce this gap in South African retailing literature by, first modelling the total retailing experience and, then, assessing the influence of selected individual retailing dimensions on customer satisfaction. It also investigates whether the impact of these dimensions of the retailing experience differs between fast food restaurants and supermarket retailers. The empirical results suggest a fairly consistent pattern of relationships between fast food restaurants and supermarkets.

Highlights

The retail environment worldwide is in a constant state of adjustment and adaptation
Despite the criticism levelled against SERVQUAL (Buttle, 1995), the items used for the measurement of the various dimensions of service quality, are regarded as suitable to measure some of the controllable elements of the total retail experience
When comparing the total model with the fast food model, the difference is 0.065 - just inside the range proposed by Hair et al The total model is not quite as good a predictor of customer satisfaction for a fast food restaurant as it is for a supennarket

Summary

Introduction

The retail environment worldwide is in a constant state of adjustment and adaptation. Competition, emanating from new entrants and formats as well as foreign sources, contributes to this constant flux, consumers exert a major influence on this state of affairs. Present-day consumers have more choices than ever before, they have more information at their disposal than ever before. Increasing pressure of time may decrease the propensity to remain loyal to a retailer. Consumers often assume that various rights and choices are owed to them (Schriver, 1997).

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion