Measuring Retail Service Quality in Sport Stores by Using RSQS Model : A case study of Stadium in Helsinki

Abstract: During the past few decades service quality has become a major area of attention topractitioners, managers and researchers. It has strong impact on business performance,lower costs, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability. This study aimedat analysis of retail service quality dimensions at clothing stores. The purpose of thisthesis was to find out how customers perceive the overall retail service quality in a sportstore. We chose Stadium in Helsinki, Finland as our case company.A survey of 300 shoppers in various Stadium sport stores in Helsinki has evaluatedretail service quality according to Retail Service Quality Scale (RSQS) which composesof 5 dimensions namely physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problemsolvingand policy.The analysis part includes descriptive and statistics analysis. The descriptive analysiswas mainly presenting the statistical results in order to summarize data for the generalconclusions. The statistical analysis presented the differences in perception. The gapanalysis model examined the evidence about how consumers perceive service quality inretail stores and try to identify which dimensions and more specifically sub-dimensionsof RSQS they are satisfied or not-satisfied with.The finding result is that consumers are not satisfied with any dimension of servicequality. Consumer’s perception of service quality is poor in all dimensions, whichmeans that their perceptions are lower than expected level and what makes theirexperience in retail stores less enjoyable. The retail stores need to make improvementsin all dimensions in order to close gaps that could lead to increasing customersatisfaction.