توسعه یک مقیاس کیفیت خدمات در زمینه خرده فروشی مواد غذایی سازمان یافته هند Developing a service quality scale in context of organized grocery retail of India

Introduction According to Ministry of Food Processing Industries,“The food and grocery market of India is the sixth largest market in the world with retail contributing 70% of the sales. It constitutes the largest proportion of India’s retail sector and is expected to reach Rs 61 lakh crores by 2020” (Indian Food Industry, 2016). However, Indian retail industry comprises largely of unorganized “mom and pop stores” characterized by limited space, limited variety of products, limited staff, limited supply control, unstandardized accounting procedures, unavailability of capital for expansion, etc. (Gummesson, 2004). But, with an increase in the disposable incomes, increase in young population, urge for better standard of living, more number of women in the workforce, Indian consumers have become more sophisticated, informed and aware. Thus, they are more attracted toward organized retail arrangement characterized by better quality of products, longer shelf life, better shopping experiences with music, lighting, courteous and friendly employees, car parking facilities, etc. Customers today have become more informed which makes their expectations and perceptions with respect to service providers more oriented to change, thus, making the process of measurement and management of service quality a difficult task for the service provider (Vargo, 2004). The traditional differentiation tools used by grocery retailers such as low price, discounts and promotions, etc. have become almost redundant as the same is leading to a vicious circle of price war. As the offerings of grocery retailers are quite similar, there is a great need to make efforts for the betterment of service quality so as to better satisfy the customers and make them loyal. Brown (1989) suggested that effective service quality is the key to attain competitive position in the marketplace. The perceptions regarding the service quality of grocery retailers vary on the basis of individual instincts, geographic location, demographic characteristics, etc. Each and every service has distinct characteristics and also the drivers affecting the various characteristics are distinct for B2C and B2B customers. Although, there is a vast literature on the concept of service quality, no agreement has yet been attained on the scale or tool for the measurement of service quality in case of organized grocery retail sector. Existing instruments include scales developed either for the measurement of perceived service quality in general or for the measurement of retail services in general. Among such instruments, the scale developed by Dabholkar (1996) known as Retail Service Quality Scale (RSQS) has attained great popularity as a measure of service quality in context of retail sector. Several researchers have examined the validity of RSQS in context of grocery retail of developed countries such as Singapore (Mehta, 2000), South Africa (Dabholkar, 1996) and the USA and South Korea (Kim and Jin, 2001), etc. and have found it appropriate for measuring service quality. However, almost all previous researches have focused primarily on developed countries (Herbig, 1996) and service quality perceptions of Indian consumers is still unexplored (Gupta, 2004). Since the previous scales have been developed in context of countries which have a more mature retail environment, applying the same measures to relatively undeveloped Indian markets without adaptation would be inappropriate. It has, thus, become imperative to understand the priorities of Indian customers and allocate the resources accordingly for their effective utilization (Sachdev, 2004).