A STUDY OF SERVICE SATISFACTION, CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, AND FREQUENCY OF SHOPPING IN DEPARTMENT STORE IN INDIA

Retail industry in India is one of the sunrise sector with a growth rate of about 20 percent. The main reasons behind high growth are concerned with rising disposable incomes, good demographics with young customer base, varying lifestyles, expansion of the middle class people and a high potential for penetration into urban and rural markets. In order to ensure success in retailing, customer overall satisfaction is mandatory which lead to customer loyalty. The purpose of this paper is to investigate crucial factors that lead to customer loyalty in the department store in India, namely service quality and customer satisfaction. Besides, the intermediate effect of customer satisfaction on the service quality and customer loyalty relationship was analyzed. In addition to this, consistency of quality of service across four retail locations were also examined as heterogeneity of services offered a challenge to ensure consistency in service quality. Field research was conducted with a sample of 200 customers. The questionnaire was used for the purpose of data collection. The findings concluded that customer service was an important factor of customer’s overall satisfaction and had a significant positive impact on it. The mediation role of customer satisfaction on the service quality and customer loyalty relationship had been confirmed. The analysis confirmed that there was a measurable difference in the service quality between stores, and that was due to the poor service of a single store rather than a more serious company-wide variation in store image.