An Evaluation of In-Store Services to Enhance Customer Satisfaction

Retail services are activities or a series of activities performed by retailers that are designed to enhance the customer satisfaction levels. In-store services are a kind of retail services provided by the retailer to ensure maximum customer convenience while the customers are shopping inside the outlets. The customers can be attracted and retained to a particular outlet if they are provided maximum convenience during shopping and maximum satisfaction after shopping. Hence it is very important for every retailer to know the expected in-store services by their target customers. The studies so far have either concentrated on overall retail services or determinants of a retail outlet choice. Therefore, an attempt has been made to organize a specific market research that identifies especially in-store services that enhance customer satisfaction by listening to the voice of the customers. A good number of retailers/retail managers of shopping malls, hypermarkets and supermarkets have been interviewed to know the in-store services provided by them. A structured questionnaire has been designed in such a way that it reflects the voice of the target market as it considers all in-store services obtained from interviews and previous studies. This specific market research can be organized in other urban/rural retail markets of the world by generalizing the methodology and variables (in-store services).