This document provides an overview of a research project studying the service quality of Big Basket, an online grocery retailer in India, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indore. The document outlines the introduction, company background, literature review, objectives, methodology, and bibliography for the research project. The methodology will use surveys and SERVQUAL to assess customer expectations and perceptions of Big Basket's service quality across dimensions like tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Statistical analysis will then evaluate any gaps between expectations and perceptions.

1. Major Research Project
Synopsis On
“A STUDY ON SERVICE QUALITY OF BIG BASKET DURING PANDEMIC WITH RESPECT TO INDORE”
For partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of
MBA (MARKETING MANAGEMENT)
Batch- 2020-22
Submitted by: Guided by:
KANHAAGRAWAL Ms. DEEPTI SHASTRI GUPTA
MBA II SEM, BMR IPS Academy, Indore
IBMR, IPS ACADEMY

2.  Table of Contents
 Introduction 3
 Company Background 4-7
 Literature Review 8-9
 Rationale of the Study 10
 Objective of Study 10
 Research Methodology 11
 Research Design 11
 Sample Design 11
 Tools for Data Collection 11
 Tools for Data Analysis 12
 Bibliography 13

3. INTRODUCTION
Service quality is the level of conformance of service to the customer specification and expectations. Whether customers are
satisfied or not, depends on the balance between customer expectations and customer experience with the products. When
company is able to raise the customer expectations then it result in to customer satisfaction. Service quality analysis is
useful in defining the weak areas where immediate corrective action is required. If the gap score reduce gradually then it
leads to improvement in service quality and in turn it result in to customer satisfaction.
Service
Philip Kotler and Armstrong (2001) defined a service as any act or performance that one party provides to another that is
fundamentally intangible or untouched and does not affect the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied
to a physical product.
Service Quality
Lewis and Booms defined service quality as an evaluation of the degree to which the service provider can match the
expectations of the customer. Service quality is defined as the customer perception of how well a service meets or exceeds
their expectations. It is the level of conformance of service to customer specification and expectations. Customers from
service expectations based on past experiences, marketing communications and word-of-mouth and it is the consumer who
finally judges the service quality. This forces service marketers to take an outside in approach and evaluate their service
quality from customer point of view.
Customers Perception
Customers perception has been defined as a customer overall impression of the organization and its service. Further, due to
technological development, affluence and rise in level of education, customers’ perceptions are greatly changing calling for
organization to have concerted effort to understand these perceptions.

4. COMPANYPROFILE
Big basket is the largest online grocery supermarket in India. It was launched in 2011, quite about the time when e-
commerce was in its nascent stage in the country. Big basket was founded by Hari Menon, V S Sudhakar,
V.S.Ramesh, Vipul Parekh and Abhinay Choudhari. Big basket is headquartered in Bengaluru and delivers to 26
cities in India such as Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Delhi, Noida, Mysore, Coimbatore, Vijayawada-Guntur,
Kolkata, Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar, Lucknow-Kanpur, Gurgaon, Vadodara, Visakhapatnam, Surat, Nagpur, Patna,
Indore and Chandigarh Tricity city limits.
Big basket was launched at a time when India's busy workforce in cities was finding it difficult to allocate time to
buy groceries and home essentials. Big basket gave them the flexibility to place their order anytime and get the
things delivered at their preferred time. Big basket offers groceries and food supplies in various categories such as
fruits & vegetables, food grains, oil, masalas, bakery items, beverages, branded foods, personal care products,
household supplies, eggs, meat, fish, etc. Big basket currently offers more than 18,000 products across various
categories and features more than 1000 brands in its catalogue. Big basket comes with the promise of lowest rates
and prompt delivery services.
Big Basket signed up new customers during the pandemic as people banked on e-grocers to shop for essentials and
restricted movements were imposed. In a survey released on Tuesday, the company said the number of new
customers has increased by as much as 84% compared to the pre Covid levels while the retention rate grew by 50%
against the earlier 30%-45%.
The new consumers are using the platform for their monthly grocery purchases as well as top-ups. The total number
of times a customer visited the Big Basket website or app is 55% higher than before and the number of households
ordering on the platform has also gone up by 44%. “In terms of consumer behaviour, this means a lot more
customers are now shopping for groceries online for the first time,” Big Basket said. The firm believes the shift to e-
grocery is “here to stay.”

5.  The online grocer’s subscription based service by daily that delivers milk and fresh items has seen a growth of 139% during
the January-July period, Big Basket claimed. Indulgence categories added more households—items such as chocolates, cup
noodles, namkeen and savoury snacks registered a 50% to 140% growth in household penetration during the pandemic
compared to February as work from home boosted in-home consumption. More households stocked up on soda and cocktail
mixes with the category registering a 125% increase in penetration against February, the company said.
 Products related to experimentation and hobbies have also seen an increase in purchases. For Big Basket, colours and
crayons have seen a penetration increase of 354% while gardening tools have seen a rise of 100%.
 The company claims to be recording about 20 million orders per month. Recently, Big Basket said that it reached $1 billion
run-rate in annual revenues.

6. HISTORY
Big basket was launched in 2011, but its journey had begun much earlier. It was in the year 1999 that a group of
people comprising V S Sudhakar, Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, Abhinay Choudhari and V S Ramesh launched their
online retail business called Fabmart. The business did quite well and later physical retail malls called Fabmall
were launched in various locations in South India. The business was eventually sold to the Aditya Birla Group and
now it is known popularly as 'More' retail chain. However, the founders were itching to start something new and
with their experience in retail business, they came together once again to launch Big basket in 2011. Big basket
currently has revenue of around $3.2 million and approximately 4,000 employees.
Funding:
Big basket has received funding worth around $526 million. The investors include Alibaba Group, Abraaj Group, Ascent
Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Brand Capital, Helion Venture Partners, ICICI Venture, IFC Venture Capital Group,
LionRock Capital, Paytm Mall, Sands Capital Management, Sands Capital Ventures, Trifecta Capital and Zodius Capital.
There are talks about additional funding of around $200 million, post which, the company would be valued at around $900
million.
Acquisitions:
Big basket acquired Delyver in June 2015 for an undisclosed amount. Delyver was also an online grocery store and its
specialty was using local stores to deliver groceries to people. Now, all business assets of Delyver have been merged with
Big basket

7. Competition:
Big basket competes with various other startups in the online grocery segment. Competitors include Grofers, Zopnow,
Peppertap, Naturesbasket, Aaramshop, etc. Various city-specific online retail stores have also come up, which are giving
tough competition to Big basket. Even bigger e-commerce players such as Amazon India and Snapdeal have also started
selling groceries online, which is creating new challenges for Big basket.
CURRENT
Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd has agreed to acquire control of India’s largest online grocer Big Basket, according to a filing with the
Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Friday, in a deal valued at more than $1 billion.
Tata Sons’ digital services subsidiary Tata Digital Ltd has proposed to acquire up to 64.3% stake in Supermarket Grocery
Supplies Pvt. Ltd (SGS), which sells products to commercial units through business.bigbasket.com in the first step.
Subsequently, SGS may acquire full control of Innovative Retail Concepts Pvt. Ltd (IRC), which sells products to customers
through bigbasket.com

8. REVIEWOFLITERATURE
 STUART GIBSON (1996)
Senior litigator in tax division of united state of America
Study found that service firms take little effort in planning for service quality. The costs associated with poor service quality
and it's planning results in lower profits as a portion of the “cycle of service failures” and evaluation of quality planning
technique or quality function deployment suggest suitable modifications which would prevent service failures. The research
also illustrates the potential for the quality function deployment process as an effective tool at both the strategic planning
level and the tactical level using the front-desk activities in a hotel.
 KUEI & LU (1997)
Presents a synergy and integration of marketing and operations for continuous quality improvement in a service setting and
also discusses responsibilities, improvements and measurements of service quality. It has advocated amalgamation of
service quality improvement tool (QFD) and service quality evaluation i.e. SERVQUAL and suggested that this synergy and
integration of systems tools, and concepts would be the aim of the organization in achieving service quality.
 PARISEAU & McDaniel (1997)
In their study about business schools have mentioned that Total quality management (TQM) improves quality while
reducing costs but since it involves fact-based continuous improvement, data need to be assessed for level of student and
faculty satisfaction. SERVQUAL is used to assess both the quality and importance of each of the dimensions: assurance,
reliability, empathy, responsiveness and tangibles, to tests agreement between the views of faculty (providers) and students
(consumers). It has strongly established that SERVQUAL may be used as for benchmarking performance in order to
improve service quality.

9.  Galloway & Ho (1996)
Former Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom
A model of service quality based upon operational issues which are directly relevant to staff training &
skills which are developed on three important dimensions of hard/soft, outcome/process and
objective/subjective. It mentions that the benefits to the organization by matching customer expectations
with staff skills has resulted in increased level of job satisfaction for staff.
 Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons (2014)
The tangibles dimension of service quality has been tangibility of the provided services, and it includes the firm’s materials
and equipment and physical facilities, the physical environmental conditions, materials used for a communication, and the
like.

10. RATIONALEOFSTUDY
The study is undertaken to understand the dimensions and components of quality. It also explores the opportunity of
measuring service quality and finding any scope for further improvements in the established procedures
OBJECTIVES
To assess customers expectation and perception level towards service quality of big basket in terms of dimensions:
tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy.
To analyze the discrepancy gap between customers expectation and perception towards service quality of big basket.

11. METHODOLOGY
 RESEARCH DESIGN
The research design for the study is based on exploratory and descriptive research method which use for service quality. The
idea of research is to study facts, figure, and perceptions.
 SAMPLE DESIGN
Convenience sampling based in Indore. From Google form the questionnaire is filled from the people to study the topic.
 TOOLS FOR DATA COLLECTION
The goal for all data collection is to capture SERVICE quality that then translates to rich data analysis and allows the
building of a convincing and credible answer to questions that have been posed
 Primary Data
Primary data was collected from various people and their opinion and information for the specific purposes of study helped
to run the analysis. In essence, the questions asked were tailored to elicit the data that helped for study. The data was
collected through questionnaire to understand their experience and preference towards their loyal customer.

12.  Secondary Data
To make primary data collection more specific, secondary data helped to make it more useful. It helps to improve the
understanding of the problem. Secondary data was collected from various sources such as different business websites and
published papers.
 TOOLS FOR DATAANALYSIS
After tabulating all the relevant data, appropriate statistical tools where performed.

13. Bibliography
Books: Research Methodology by C.R. Kothari
Websites:
 https://www.scribd.com/document/405251355/Measuring-Service-Quality-of-Bigbasket-using-
SERVQUAL-docx
 https://m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/english/news+patrolling-epaper-newspatr/bigbasket+company+profile-newsid-
73815503
 https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/sme/pandemic-bigbasket-records-84-jump-in-new-customers/2072206/
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigbasket#:~:text=BigBasket%20was%20founded%20by%20Sudhakar,of%20over%
20US%241%20billion.
 https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/tatas-to-buy-bigbasket-for-more-than-1-billion-11615573682378.html
 http://www.shanlaxjournals.in/pdf/MGT/V3N4/MGT_V3_N4_005.pdf
 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244020919517