The document discusses service quality and management in retailing. It outlines different types of retail transactions that can involve merchandise, services, or a combination. It also describes approaches to service quality management, including the product-attribute and consumer-oriented approaches. A key model discussed is the Gronroos model of perceived quality, which separates technical and functional quality dimensions. The document also covers topics like service characteristics, models of service quality gaps, implementing service management, quality auditing, benchmarking, and effective service recovery.

1. The Management of Service and
Quality in Retailing
Dr. Gopal Thapa
Tribhuvan University

2. What constitutes Retailing
 Tangible features
 Intangible services
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3. Service components in retailing
 Transaction with merchandise
 Owned-goods service would be the traditional outright
purchase and ownership of a good from a retailer.
 Rental-goods service would deliver a tangible good, such
as a car, for the personal use of the customer.
 No ownership exists and the good has to be returned.
 Service with bought goods indicates that the retailer
performs/supplies extra services.
 These could include delivery, wrapping, providing credit,
etc.
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4. Transaction without merchandise
 In retailing there is also service without goods:
pure services without goods.
 Pure services are provided by a wide range of
retailers who are involved in arranging or
organizing travel, financial transactions and
services, or providing personal services such as
dry cleaning, a haircut or shoe repairs.
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5. Service Characteristics
 intangibility;
 perishability;
 inseparability
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6. Service Quality Management
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 Product-attribute approach
 Consumer-oriented approach

7. Product-attribute approach
 The product-attribute approach is based upon
trying to match the product’s conformance to
standardized requirements which have been set by
reference to what company managers think the
failure point to be.
 Product-attribute approaches rely on trying to
control the company’s output by using an internal
standard-setting perspective.
 This relies on an inward-looking and trading-led
management style, rather than a marketing-led
approach.
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8. Consumer-oriented approach
 It recognizes that the holistic process of service
delivery has to be controlled by taking into
consideration the expectations and attitudes of
retail customers.
 If the starting point for management is the
understanding of how quality is judged by
customers then the perception processes of this
judgment, as to whether a service is good or bad,
can be managed.
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9. The Gronroos model (1982) of
perceived quality management
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10. Technical Quality (What?)
 Technical solutions
 Know-how
 Computerized systems
 Machines
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11. Functional Quality (How?)
 Customer contact
 Attitudes
 Internal relations
 Behavior
 Service-mindedness
 Appearance
 Accessibility
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13. Model of Service Quality:
Ziethaml (1985)
 Gap 1: Ignorance of the customer’s expectations
 Gap 2: Requirement for service design standards
 Gap 3: Not delivering to service standards
 Gap 4: Inconsistency between performance and
promises
 Gap 5: The service shortfalls
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14. Implementation of Service
Management
 Leadership and commitment by senior management,
 The focus of all changes and objectives should be defined
by the customer
 The orientation of the organization needs to adopt a
process and systems approach to match or exceed customer
expectations
 Human resource management is required to motivate,
reward, train and educate staff
 to understand and deliver the concepts of quality.
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15. Implementation of Service
Management ( contd…)
 Assessment needs to be made of the added value
and benefit of any change rather than there being
an emphasis on costs and profit implications.
 That is, the long-term benefits of any change need
to be the focus of decision-making.
 A need for quality audits and control to ensure the
service meets or exceeds customer expectations
must be recognized.
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16. Factors with potential for prompting
complaints and compliments
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17. Growing emphasis on quality
control
 Companies need to find new ways of creating
differential advantage by providing better service
levels than their competitors.
 Retail competition has increased because services
and goods are available from a wide range of
channels and manufacturers are creating
technically satisfactory goods that require little
after-sales service.
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18. Growing emphasis on quality
control (Contd..)
 The increased levels of consumerism and the
greater media attention on quality have meant that
companies have to be more responsive to quality
issues.
 Consumers are far more aware of their rights and
are less likely to suffer quietly from the results of
poor quality.
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19. Growing emphasis on quality
control (Contd..)
 There has been a growing sophistication of consumer
markets, with the non-price factors of image, retail offer
positioning and service delivery processes becoming more
important.
 Technology is one of the new applications to quality
enhancement.
 It can aid service by providing higher levels of
convenience:
 for example, automatic vending or ticketing machines, bar
code checkout systems to improve accuracy and speed of
transaction, or smart card developments – all of which
provide memory of purchases.
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20. Key Terms For Quality
 Quality is the totality of relationships between
service providers (functional aspects) and the
features of retailing (technical aspects) which are
related to the delivery of satisfaction.
 Quality control checks, and also monitoring
processes to ensure that measurement of service
delivery is taking place
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21. Key Terms For Quality (Contd…)
 Total quality management (TQM) is a holistic
organizational approach which systematically attempts to
improve customer satisfaction by focusing on continuous
quality improvements without incurring unacceptable cost
increases.
 TQM is managed by quality assurance arrangements; that
is, a system is instituted to allocate responsibility for
planned and systematic activities which will ensure that the
product will provide the right levels of satisfaction for all
concerned.
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22. Key Terms For Quality (Contd…)
 In order to measure whether the quality delivery
complies with the planned delivery of the service a
quality audit needs to take place to judge the
effectiveness of the total service delivery
arrangements.
 For a system to be audited correctly a method of
creating unbiased feedback must be found.
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23. Characteristics of Quality
 Merchandise
 Service
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24. Merchandise categories
 performance based upon inherent operating
characteristics, such as the sound and clarity of a
hi-fi system;
 features which add to the basic function of the
product;
 reliability of the product not to break down in
normal use;
 conformance to standards of safety or operating
performance needs;
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25. Merchandise categories (Contd..)
 durability based upon the length of time a product
will last;
 serviceability – relating to the after-sales service
and ability to be repaired;
 aesthetics of the look, feel, design, sound and
smell of the product;
 image of the brand association, reputation and
personality of the product.
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26. Service categories
 Tangibles
 Reliability
 Responsiveness
 Competence
 Empathy
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27. QUALITY AUDITING SYSTEMS
(Based on Customers Preferences)
 external appearance of the branch;
 merchandise pricing in window display;
 greeting upon entry;
 staff approachability;
 staff availability to help;
 manager availability;
 whether the manager is recognizable;
 the number of customers served simultaneously by
one staff member;
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28. QUALITY AUDITING SYSTEMS
(Based on Customers Preferences)
 efficiency/promptness of enquiry handling;
 branch stock levels;
 staff awareness of fashion trends;
 speed of stock location;
 staff awareness of advertised lines;
 helpfulness of staff advice;
 honesty of staff advice;
 standard of fitting rooms;
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29. QUALITY AUDITING SYSTEMS
(Based on Customers Preferences)
 availability of advertised stock;
 colour/size availability;
 selection within size;
 availability of alterations advice;
 availability of garment reservation;
 eye-catching quality of window displays;
 eye-catching quality of interior displays;
 speed of till transaction;
 comparability of service in other Jaeger branches.
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30. Benchmarking
 A method now widely used for assessment of the
service standards of a company is to compare
them with those which are deemed to be the best
available
 It is a continuous process of selecting the best
practices and services against which to judge.
 It is based upon the Japanese concept dantotsu,
meaning ‘best of the best’
 If you seek out and match the best practice there
is the possibility of the attainment of superiority
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31. Four Types of Benchmarking
 Internal: where the best internal company
examples are utilized
 Competitive: based upon external directly
competing retailers and their merchandise
 Functional: which measures against the best
external market leaders or functional operations
 Generic: which is to take measures of the best
practices regardless of what sectors or industry is
represented
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32. Service Recovery
 Service recovery relates to the planned systems
and effort that a firm provides to correct a problem
following a service failure with the specific
objective of retaining a customer’s goodwill.
 Given that the estimated cost of finding a new
customer is five times that of retaining an existing
one,
 there is growing emphasis on customer retention
and relationship marketing..
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33. Service Recovery
 When a dissatisfied customer defects, the lifetime
value of that individual and anyone else who
switches due to negative comments is affected
 Long-term revenue can be enhanced by service
recovery strategies.
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34. Service Recovery
 Good service recovery procedures allow a
customer to refocus on the satisfactions received
from the service delivery process rather than to
question why corrective action was not taken.
 A problem tests the system and if a customer
complaint is dealt with appropriately the customer
is likely to become more loyal.
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35. Effective recovery requires
 Acting fast
 Admitting mistakes
 Empathy
 Relationship
 Informing and clarifying
 Remedial action
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36. Individual service recovery
strategies
 Watching for sign language
 Preplanning
 Training
 Empowerment
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37. Any Queries?
Thank you
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