Exploring the UK high street retail experience: is the service encounter still valued?

Abstract

Purpose: The relationship between service quality, the service encounter and the retail experience is explored within a changing UK retail environment. \ud Design: Data was gathered from forty customers and twenty staff of an established UK health and beauty retailer with a long standing reputation for personal customer service. A qualitative analysis was applied using both a service quality and a customer value template. Findings: Customers focused more on the utilitarian features of the service experience and less on ‘extraordinary’ aspects, but service staff still perceived that the customer encounter remained a key requisite for successful service delivery. \ud Research implications: Recent environmental developments - involving customers, markets and retail platform structures - are challenging traditional service expectations.\ud Practical Implications: Retailers may need to reassess the role of the service encounter as part of their on-going value proposition.\ud Originality/value: There has been limited research to date on the perception of shoppers to the service encounter in a changing retail environment and to the evolving notions of effort and convenience

The impact of grocery retail superstores location on the customer’s perceived quality of servicescape in Jordan

“…Customers focus on utilitarian features of service experience and less on extraordinary aspects. However, staff still perceive the service encounter as a key requisite for successful service delivery (Resnick, Foster, and Woodall 2014).…”

“…The service experience is multi-dimensional phenomenon, which includes social, cognitive, affective and physical experience (Pareigis, Edvardsson, and Enquist 2011;Khare 2013;Resnick, Foster, and Woodall 2014). The service experience affects the key performance indicators as customer loyalty and satisfactions (Migdadi 2013;Migdadi 2015;Bustamante et al 2017;Min et al 2017;Alkhatib and Migdadi 2018).…”

“…The research literature regarding location decisions of distribution centers (DCs) in a retailer facility network are quite limited in comparison with ones of manufacturing facilities location decisions (Rosenfield 1987). The retail geography literature is the main source for the academic research in the field of retail location (Resnick, Foster, and Woodall 2014). Different models were developed for determining the optimal store location, which dates back to late 1980s, the golden age for location analysis (e.g., Wringley 1988).…”

“…These studies found that the shopping visitors' loyalty and desires to stay are affected by the perceived servicescape (Wu et al 2013;Wahlberg 2016), also the perceived service quality (De Nisco and Warnaby 2013), purchase and total sales are affected by the servicescape (Hult en 2012; Borges, Babin, and Spielmann 2013;Campbell and Fairhurst 2016). The servicescape quality also affects the employees' behavior (Skandrani, Ben Dahmane Mouelhi, and Malek 2011) and the service delivery (Resnick, Foster, and Woodall 2014).…”

“…This concept is a dynamic, experiential and relational activities and interaction rather than dyadic, designed and produced by the firm for customer (McColl-Kennedy, Cheung, and Ferrier 2015;Lipkin and Lipkin 2016). The service experience is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, which includes; social, cognitive, affective and physical experience (Pareigis, Edvardsson, and Enquist 2011;Khare 2013;Resnick, Foster, and Woodall 2014). The service experience affects key performance indicators as customers' loyalty and satisfaction (Bustamante et al 2017;Min et al 2017).…”