Service Marketing

1. Assessing Service Quality In
Caculo and Delfino’s
Group No.1
Ankur Mukherjee 2014007
Eldhose Varghese 2014079
Anshima Agarwal 2014136
Pushkaraj Kulkarni 2014163
Shonit Naralkar 2014172
Eden Fernandes 2014202
Pooja Mohta 2014218
Praveen Koushik 2014223

2. Motivation
• India has become the fifth largest destination in the retail space
• The retail industry accounts for over 10% of GDP and around 8% of
employment
• Retail market is expected to grow at 12 per cent per annum, modern trade
would expand twice as fast at 20 per cent per annum and traditional trade at
10 per cent
Source: Retail industry in India (http://www.ibef.org/industry/retail-india.aspx)

3. Research Objective
• To study the service quality of the two retail stores based on customer
perception, using SERVPERF scale.
Business Problem for the manager of a retail store
• “Which factors act as the key performance indicators from a customer
perspective?”
• “Which factors give me a competitive edge in service performance?”

4. Literature Review
• Service quality is defined as ‘a global judgment or attitude, relating to the
overall superiority of the service’ (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry, 1988,
p16)
• The main service quality models are SERVQUAL and GAP model by
Parasuraman et al. (1988), SERVPERF by Cronin and Taylor (1992), Retail
Service Quality Model by Dabholkar et al. (1996)
• We have used the SERVPERF scale for our study for assessing the service
quality at Delfino’s and Caculo

5. Literature Review (Contd.)
• The SERVPERF scale consists of 22 perception items excluding any consideration of
expectations.
• The SERVPERF Scale
• The tangibles dimension in SERVPERF, measured by 4 items, deals with the appearance of physical facilities,
equipment, personnel and communication materials
• Reliability, measured by 5 items, refers to the ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately
• Responsiveness, measured by 4 items, measures the willingness to help customers and to provide prompt service
• Assurance, measured by 4 items, deals with the knowledge, courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and
confidence
• empathy dimension of SERVQUAL, containing 5 items, refers to the provision of caring, individualized attention to
customers
Source: SERVQUAL vs SERVPERF: round 2 in a multi-cultural setting, Lee, Jungk

6. Methodology
• Sample: 80 respondents is randomly collected from Delfino’s (27) and
Caculo (53).
• An Online questionnaire (22 questions) was used to interview the
customers personally.
• The questions covered all 5 factors of SERVPERF scale i.e. tangibility,
reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy.
• Data was collected using the 5 point Likert scale

7. Findings
• The mean value for Tangibility is higher for Delfino’s than Caculo. Also Tangibility
is a significant factor
• Responsiveness is highly significant and is found to be almost the same in both the
retail outlets
• Reliability is a insignificant factor and mean for Delfino’s is higher
• The empathy factor is found to be almost the same in both the outlets but is not
significant
• Assurance factor is found to be higher in Caculo as compared to Delfino’s and is
significant

8. Conclusion
• Customers perceive tangibility, responsiveness and assurance as very important
factors when it comes to choosing a retail outlet
• Since the modern retail has more of help yourself type of structure hence factors
like good communication skills, employee attractiveness etc. which comes under
Empathy fail to make a difference
• All modern retail outlets tend to have all varieties of products in sufficient stock and
competitive prices and hence Reliability is coming to be irrelevant
• Based on the factors which are significant Delfino’s seems to have a better service
quality in comparison to Caculo

9. Limitations
• Small sample collected may not give results that can be generalized.
• The manner in which questions are asked can be leading/misleading for the respondent.
• Respondent bias may creep in due to respondent’s inability to understand the question or
reluctance to share his/her view.
• A point scale may prove difficult for a respondent to comprehend.
• Responses may not be entirely correct since most of the respondents are in a hurry after
having shopped.
• The responses may be based on a particular shopping experience and may not depict the
actual performance level of a retail store.