Impact of Quality Attributes on Customer Satisfaction in Apparel Retailing

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Before the globalization most of the retaining done in retail store, in recent years non-store retailing has been growing much faster than the store retailing includes selling of the final consumer through the internet, direct mail, catalogs, the telephone and other direct selling approach. Customer became more luxurious so according to them satisfaction and quality are main focal point for the retail outlet store because one satisfied customers brings more than twenty customers and one unsatisfied customers take two hundreds customers back. Changes in customers’ expectation and perceived quality and perceived value all works in concert to drive the customer satisfaction.

We investigate the customer rating of importance of several attributes associated with Retail market. Customer satisfaction is term generally used to measure a customer’s mind rating about the company’s product and services. Quality of the attributes are all about attracting the customer, getting them to buy, buy often, buy in higher quantities and bring you even more customers.

“Data collection has been done through a very useful & popular survey method. The survey was conducted through personals interviews to record the Availability of the shoppers stop product in the outlet. The questionnaire was prepared and administered to 90 customers who have visited Shoppers Stop Store Outlet. The questionnaire contains 18 statements; 16 for quality attributes on store and 2 for customer satisfaction.

All the items were measured by responses given by the respondents on a five-point Likert Scale in agreement with statements, ranging from 1 = Poor to 5 = Excellent. In this data analysis was done by two methods. At the first , factor analysis was done to fine out the Impact of quality attributes on store . At the second, average method to analyze satisfaction of the customer. This study also made use of cross tabulation to understand the relationship between various demographical variables as gender, income, level of education and occupation with ‘Monthly Expenditure on various Different department of the store’.

This research is related to quality attribute of shopper’s stop retail outlet which contains physical facilities, value added service and maintenance of the shopper stop which reveals the quality of store and also we find the demographical variable like age & monthly income and gender & department of store which they prefer most according to their income.

INTRODUCTION

“You said people will forgot what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”

- Maya Angelou

This statement is useless if customers are not satisfied with product because products will not up to the mark.

The study of consumer selection of retail store attributes can provide a wealth of information concerning how consumer chooses a specific store. The consumers’ decision is associated with their perception of a store’s ability to satisfy their needs and wants. Generally the importance of store attributes varies according to the type of product purchased, such as groceries, durables or services as well as the type of consumer, timing and the place. Differences in consumer choice and evaluation of store attributes can be attributed to many reasons such as, different culture, personality, and lifestyle.

The expectations of the customers are various according to gender, age, income, level of education and occupation in Monthly Expenditure on Apparel. The retailer companies are expected to conform the requirements of the customer on both product and service level. For instance fast fashion has increased its share in the apparel market as customers expect greater variety and frequent design changes.

On the other hand, the retail store attributes having the critical role in creating brand image has an influence on customer satisfaction. Although the expectation of consumer can be named under two parts as product and service quality within these titles, there are specific requirements that clearly diverges from the other ones in apparel market such as style, variety, durability and performance and so on. When retailers’ sales goods of certain company they keep in mind all the services provides by that particulars company like the delivery of goods on time and sales of that products.

The decision to patronize a retail store usually starts with a set of characteristics or store image attributes. Consumers often use these attributes to determine whether or not retailers can cater their specific needs. Consumers are likely to avoid those store that do not present the desired retail environment and seek a more congenial store that do not present the desire retail environment and seek a more congenial a tore to patronize. Lindquist (1974-75) indentified nine image attributes that contribute to favorable or unfavorable consumer attitudes toward retail stores. These attributes were merchandise, service, clientele, physical facilities, convenience, promotion, store atmosphere, and post- transaction satisfaction. In addition to identifying those attributes that influence patronage decision, retailers must also understand approach-avoidance behavior.

The subject which I preferred for my project and research is “impact of quality attribute of store on customer satisfaction”. The scope was to study the retailers and customers preference about the Shopper’s stop product which they prefer.

The objective of the research is impact of quality attributes of Shopper’s stop store on customer satisfaction though behavior of the customers with respect of Shopper’s stop store and brand, also know the frequency level of purchasing and customers preference while purchasing the products .Through this project I want to specify how quality of store like convenience of location, spaciousness in store, adequacy of trial room and layout of various department etc. impacts the satisfactory level of customers.

OBJECTIVES

- To study the impact of quality attributes of store on customer satisfaction.

- To understand the connection of demographical variables like gender, age, income, level of education and occupation in Monthly Expenditure on Apparel.

- To know the overall experience of the customer with respect to shopper stop retail store.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Quality Attributes of Store and Customer satisfaction

“You can have the best product or service in the world, but if people don’t buy – it’s worthless. So in reality it doesn’t matter how wonderful your new product or service is. The real question is will they buy it?”

- Noel Peebles

As we know if the customers are satisfied then the retail industries grow fastly. If the customers are satisfied then they attract more and the quality attribute provide the means for measuring fitness and suitability of the products and it is also like a benchmark that describes the intended behavior within the environment for which it was built.

As the market becoming more and more competitive then customers are becoming more switcher or more constant due to satisfaction or not satisfied by their products. Sometimes satisfied customer jump everyday and reason are not always defined, changing customers neglect into customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction into customer loyalty is critical and its all based on behavior and service to the customer. Customer satisfaction converts into customer loyalty only from the effective business relationship. In the words of Brian Kama, march 31, 2011.

There are five keys to improving customer satisfaction:

1. Create a formal feedback program
2. Measure customer satisfaction using a mix of internal metrics and customer viewpoints
3. Respect your customer by using known data in your feedback program
4. Make data actionable and share result and action with customers, employee and internal groups
5. Invite customers to provide ongoing feedback as part of a feedback panel.

After the analysis of these five key points we conclude that the quality attributes of the products and related materials all give the impact on customer satisfaction. It shows that the customer knowledge can be a critical source of competitive advantage in retail business. This shows that customers involvement with purchase decision.

Fig: Typology of knowledge management in retail business

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Transactional data: High frequency of purchase will generate large quantities of transactional data.

Consumer community: Useful for capturing data beyond purchase behavior , especially in situation of high involvement.

Interactive data: High involvement purchase will provide opportunities for interaction that in turn will generate rich data.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Brunner and Mason (1968): They investigated the important of driving time upon the preference of consumers towards regional shopping centers. They expressed that although it is recognized that population, purchasing power, population density, newspaper circulation, and other factors are influential in determining the shopping habits of consumers, a factor which is generally overlooked is the driving time require reaching the center. In this study, it was established that the driving time required to reach the center is highly influential in determining consumer’s shopping center preferences. The most consistent and significant driving time dimension in delineating shopping center trade areas was found at the 15 minutes driving points, as three-fourth of each center’s shoppers resided within this range.

Davies (1995) expressed that the way we think about retail location is dominated by the idea that the primary role of the retail store or the retail center is to attract the Shopper to the location. Just because a crowd exists does not mean that the people in it can be easily converted to being shoppers. A number of factors will determine the likely levels of sales. The complementarily of the merchandise with the primary activity being followed by the crowd; the ease with which they can exit from that activity that the associated issue of how much time they perceive is available to them and about their satisfaction.

Kotler & Keller (2006) Opines that in the field of customer satisfaction retail research, the emphasis has primarily been upon the store rather than the mall as the unit of analysis. There has been some past research work on shopping as a total unit.

The first approach specified Charlton, (1973) but drawing on earlier work is that store loyalty is essentially negative and the outcome of limited resources : those who have lack of money, time and transport or whose environment lack choice are forced to use store much of the time and therefore obliged to be loyal.

The secondary approach (Caman) is also negative but emphasizes life style with commitment outside the home including work, little home entertaining and lack of interest in deals, advertising and shopping. Such people are averse to shopping and do not experiment.

A third approach is proposed by Dunn and Wrigley (1984) who noted that the growth in size of supermarkets and shopping centers in many countries could have affected patterns of behavior. Dunn and Wrigley found that some store loyalty arose as one- stop shopping, often in large comprehensive supermarkets. This is what call “discretionary loyalty”, It differs from the first approach it implies that the possession of appropriate resources raise store loyalty.

Simaon (1992) says that with respect to location, the two most commonly noted determinants of retail patronage are accessibility and visibility. Size and quality of facilities are also relevant to retail patronage to the extent that unfavorable design characteristics may negate the attraction of an accessible and visible site. The gravity and potential model have traditionally been used for defining trading areas surrounding major cities. It contends that shoppers choose which centers to patronage by trading between the utility and the cost of the center of the shoppers.

Bill GAW (2006) says about customer satisfaction as follow, the main motto of the business process is to get customer satisfaction and getting close to customers. The reality of customer satisfaction is in the eyes of the beholder. Customer satisfaction represents a set of business process touching on all aspects of the company. Successful business leader tend to think big and think beyond and strive to provide their selected customers with products and services under the business philosophy of customer satisfaction.

Because different customers have different needs, a company cannot effectively satisfy this wide range of needs equally. The most important strategy planning training decision in the pursuit of customer’s satisfaction is to choose the most important customers. All customers are important, but invariably some are more important than others. Customer’s satisfaction must be predicated on continuous quality improvement and team dynamics and commitment. Establishing effective business relationship with key customer personnel is paramount to making it easy for customers to do business with your company. The important part is designing systems that allow you to do the job right the first time. All the smiles in the world are not going to help your products or services are unsatisfactory.

Individual and team direct – line communication with customer is the best approach to obtaining timely and relevant “how are we doing “feedback from customers. Customer satisfaction surveys are tedious, possibly supplier biases and not very accurate in their customer service portrayal. The n they prefer one – to – one customer satisfaction system.

Lumpkin and green (1985) Customers wanted advertise products to be available, easy to find and reliable tags are also desired, fast checkout counters.

They have conducted a study on the importance of attributes for elderly consumers. The main objective of this article was to identify store attributes which elderly shoppers seek when buying apparel and to assess the relative importance of these attributes. The five most influential attributes to the quality/price relationship and finding satisfactory products. Consumer desired quality products and yet wanted attractive price-value for their money. They also want fashion goods of suitable style and size and the ability to return unsatisfactory goods. In addition to attractive everyday price apparel consumers wants sales. They want advertised products to be available, easy to find and readable tags and labels are also desired. While convenient parking was desire entrance to the premise, fast checkout counters, close to other stores, close to home, phone order, and home delivery were not as important.

McDaniel and Burnett (1990) first time consumer religiosity on the importance on various retail outlet store attributes was investigated by McDaniel and Burnett. The results showed that one aspect of religiosity, religious commitment, particularly measured by cognitive religiosity and one aspect of behavioral religiosity are significant in predicting the importance individuals place on certain retail evaluate criteria. Consumers with a high degree of cognitive religious commitment have viewed that sales personnel friendliness, shopping affiance, and product quality as being of greater importance in selecting a retail store than did those low in cognitive religious commitment. Religious contribution, a behavioral component of religious commitment, was positively and significantly associated with sales personnel friendliness/assistance and credit availability.

Sarkissian 1989 due to modern lifestyle costumer need convenience in shopping. Non store retailing is increasing because of inadequate parking in malls, long lines in counters, uninformed personnel in store.

Growth in nonstory retail operation (e.g.; direct marketing and in-home shopping) is due to changes in consumer lifestyle, buying habits, and new technology. Changes in lifestyle are reflected by an emphasis placed on leisure, an increase in working women, a greater demand for service and convenience in shopping, and an increase in credit card usage. Growth is also due to problems consumers have encountered with retail stores. Retail consumers complain of inadequate parking, long lines, congestion and uninformed personnel in store. Catalogs have also experienced their share of customer complaints. After seeing all those problems in retail and consumers are facing all those problems then Sarkissian suggested that catalog and direct mail as well as other forms of nonstory retail operations will continue to divert dollars from retail stores.

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