# Introduction ndia is the second largest economy in the world where 70% of the population still lives in the villages (Maithani, 2009). Retailing in India contributes about 10 percent of Indian total GDP and retailing provides employment 6-to-7% in our country. Indian is the highest retail density market in the world (Kalhan, 2007). Retailing in India consists of organized and unorganized form of Retailing. As per the images F & R research estimates for Indian Retail, the Indian retail market comprises of in total value of Rs. 1,330,000 crores in the year 2007 and it was growing at a rate of 0.8 percent annually. In the year 2007, the share of organized retail was 5.9% and it comprised of Rs.78,300 crores (Images F&R, 2009). But the growth rate of organized retail was 42.4% in the year 2007 and it was expected that it will maintain its growth rate over the next few years. It was also estimated that organized Retail would touch Rs. 2, 30,000 crores by the year 2010. As per A. T. Kearney list of emerging markets in the retail investment India is going to be the fastest growing economy in the world and the third largest economy in terms of GDP and 4th largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity after USA, China and Japan. As per the another report published by Goldman Sachs India has a potential of growth over the next 50 years and it will contribute more than 5% average growth rate per year during this period. Organized retailing is one of the fastest growing sectors in Indian retailing. The new forms of Malls, Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, departmental stores, Discount stores etc. have made their presence in the urban India. These organized stores are now marching towards rural India. The big retail stores like Reliance Fresh, Big Bazaar, Vishal Mega mart, Spencer's, Westside and Ebony etc. have spread throughout the country and these stores are now attracting large number of the customers for purchasing the products from these stores. The stores belong to Supermarket, Hypermarket as well as Departmental stores in our country. Consumers are attracting towards these stores because they are getting more benefits in selecting the products and services what they expect in terms of benefits (Haley, 1968;Gutman, 1982;Reynolds and Gutman, 1984). Now it is found that service quality is an important criterion for attracting the customers towards the stores. Service quality is also very important for imparting the customer satisfaction and which is further essential for the purchasing decisions in a retail store. (Dawkins and Reichheld, 1990;Parasuraman Zeithaml and Berry, 1985;. Hence this study is necessary to analyze the various aspects of service quality and customer satisfaction as well as purchasing behavior across the various retail stores in our country. Service quality is an important element of customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction is very important in retaining the customers with the company. Customer satisfaction also helps in reducing the switching costs in the business. Hence it becomes an important aspect to analyze the customer satisfaction level in the customers. The company should make the strategies to impart more and more among the customers for making their business profitable and growth oriented in the long run. Now customer satisfaction depends upon the performance of the products. If the performance of the product falls short of expectations than a customer will feel dissatisfied from the product. If the performance of the product matches with the expectations, then customer will feel satisfied from the products and Services offered by the company. Hence a satisfied customer will purchase more and more products from the company. So it becomes very important to impart more and more customer satisfaction to the customers. It will help them to retain with the products and services being offered by the company. # II. # Review of Related Literatures From the review of literature it was found that service quality is an important element for any Customer in a retail store. Now it becomes an important criterion for understanding the good quality for the customer as per their expectations and formulating the proper strategies to serve them well Berry, 1985, 1988). Now it was further find out that service quality is difficult to define, describe and to measure because of its subjective nature (Brown, Gummesson, Edvardsson and Gustavsson, 1991). These characteristics of the services make them different from the goods (Ghobadian, Speller & Jones 1993; Groth & Dye, 1999). Oliver in (1980) defined customer satisfaction as a psychological state when the emotions surrounding disconfirmed expectations are coupled with the consumer's prior feelings about the consumption experience of the product or the service offered by the company. Parasuraman in (1994) found that satisfaction is being influenced by service quality, product quality as well as by the price. Another researcher Yi (1991) found that customer satisfaction operates in two different ways: transaction specific and general overall. The concept of transaction-specific concept defines customer satisfaction as the assessment made after a certain purpose. Now further satisfaction is also the customer experience as well as rating of the product on the basis of the past experiences (Johnson and Fornell, 1991). Fornell (1992) also found that customer satisfaction is very important for creating the customer loyalty for the products and services being offered by the company. In the studies conducted by Bolton andDrew, 1991) found that service quality helps in forming a type of attitude which further decides on customer satisfaction. Further studied conducted by Bei and Chiao (2001) concluded that customer satisfaction has a positive effect on customer retention. Reichheld and Sasser also (1990) found that customer satisfaction is an important tool for increasing the profits of the company. Now the satisfaction of the customer depends upon the after sales service in relation to the consumer expectations from the products or the services purchased by him. Satisfaction is defined as a person's feelings of pleasure or disappointment resulting from perceived performance of the product in relation to customer's expectations from the product. If the performance of the product falls short of expectations than a customer will feel dissatisfied from the product. If the performance of the product matches with the expectations, the customer is satisfied and if the performance exceeds the expectations, the customer will feel delighted from the product or the service used by him (Susan and David, 1999). # III. # Research Methodology Used This study was being carried out in the regions of Delhi, Haryana (Gurgaon and Faridabad) and Uttar Pradesh (Ghaziabad and Noida) in India. This study covers the organized stores in the above regions. In this study, The RSQS (Retail Service Quality Scale) developed by Dhabolkar, Thorpe and Rentz (1996) was used for data collection from the customers. This scale is designed for the use in studying retail businesses that offer a mix of goods and services, for assessing levels of service quality, and the necessary changes required in the services. This scale consists of 28 items and five dimensions: Physical aspects (6 items), Reliability (5), Personal Interaction ( 9), Problem Solving (3), and Policy (5). The first three dimensions have sub-dimensions: Physical aspects (i.e. appearance and convenience), Reliability (i.e. promises and doing it right), and personal interactions (i.e. inspiring confidence and courteousness/helpfulness). A five point likert scale starting from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5) response was used. i. Customer Satisfaction Customer satisfaction was related to product quality and service quality. A five point scale ranging from (1) highly dissatisfied to (5) highly satisfied was used in the study. # ii. Behavioral Intentions Many items were used to measure the behavioral intentions towards the retail stores. The researcher used a five point scale to measure the behavioral intentions, which include loyalty intention, switching intention and recommending behavior in the retail store. Respondents complain behavior was also tested with the three aspects. First if they faced any problem with the store. Second if they complain about the problem and lastly their level of satisfaction with the solution of problem. # c) Objectives of the study This study consists of following objectives. 1. To compare the service quality aspects across the various organized stores. 2. To compare the customer satisfaction across the various organized stores. 3. To compare the behavioral aspects across the various organized stores. # d) Hypotheses of the Study On the basis of above objectives, the following hypotheses are formulated for the study. 1. There exists a significant difference among the various service quality aspects across the different organized retail stores. 2. There exists a significant difference among the customer satisfaction aspects across the different organized retail stores. 3. There exists a significant difference among the various behavioral aspects across the different organized retail stores. 4. There exists a significant difference among the recommending behavioral aspects across the Different organized retail stores. 5. There exists a significant difference among the various switching aspects across the different Organized retail stores. 6. There exists a significant difference among the various loyalty aspects across the different Organized retail stores. # e) Validity and Reliability of the Scale By doing reliability analysis it was found that the overall internal consistency was found to be 0.939. The Cronbach (á) Value for Physical Aspects, Reliability, Personal Interaction, Problem Solving and customer satisfaction was found above 0.7. Here the value for policy was found 0.545 and for behavioral intentions 0.574 which are acceptable but not quite satisfactory. The validity of a scale may be defined as the extent to which differences in observed scale scores reflect true differences among objects on the characteristics being measured, rather than systematic or random error. Perfect validity requires that there should be no measurement error (Malhotra, 2007). There are three types of validity test are, content validity, criterion validity and construct validity (Malhotra, 2007). Here in this study as per the need and demand of the study the content validity also called as face validity was done for this scale. # IV. # Data Interpretation and Data Analysis The final study was done from a sample size of 600 customers and from this 540 completely filled in Questionnaires were received. It gave a response rate of 90%. It was quite satisfactory. This study is being carried out to understand the perceptions of service quality, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions across the various organized retail outlets. The Respondents descriptive statistics in various outlets is given below. Here in this study ANOVA is used to analyze the service quality perception across the various organized retail outlets in and around Delhi. In the table by applying ANOVA on the difference between the mean scores across the various organized retail stores, it is found that some of the variables relating to service quality are showing statistical significant at 95% level. From the table 5.70, statistical significant difference is found in the following Variables of service quality in organized retail outlets. Westside Ebony F Sig customers want from the outlet. The layout of Reliance Fresh was found better from the table and then it was followed by Ebony and it was found minimum in case of Westside. In the same manner there exists a significant difference in the layout of the different outlets for moving in the store. From the same table it was found that there exists a significant difference in safety of transactions among the various outlets. The mean value Reliance fresh was highest and minimum in Vishal Mega-mart. Hence the outlets need to improve their transactions so that customers feel secure with these outlets. Another significant difference was found in the parking space. Nowadays parking is becoming a big problem in the big cities. Hence for attracting and for satisfying the customers, it is advised that these stores should provide sufficient parking space to their customers. g) Customer Satisfaction across the various organized Retail Stores By One way ANOVA test, it is analyzed that there is any significant difference in the customer satisfaction across the various organized stores or not. From the table it is analyzed that, there is a significant difference in the following 1) product service quality of the outlet (p=.046) 2) My store always meets my expectations (p=.008) Hence from the table 4.2, we find that there exists a significant difference in two aspects of customer's satisfaction among the various outlets. In one product service quality and another one is meeting the customers' expectations levels. Hence the outlet needs to improve in these aspects to meet customer satisfaction levels. # h) Behavioral Intentions across the various organized Retail Stores Behavioral Intentions are concerned with purchasing or not to purchase in a retail store. It comprises of recommending behavior, switching behavior as well as loyalty intentions of the customer with the retail store. It is very important for the retailer to understand these aspects in a retail outlet so that he can take appropriate course of actions for the improvement purpose in a retail store. Hence from this we can say that there exists a significant difference in layout of the different outlets and layout of the outlet s very important to find out what the From the table 4.3, it is analyzed that there is only one statistical significance difference in the aspects of behavioral intentions across the various organized retail stores. 1) Encouraging the friends and relatives to buy from this outlet (p=.041) Hence from this we can say that there exists significant difference across the different organized retail stores in recommending aspects, whereas there exist no significant differences among the switching aspects and loyalty aspects across the various organized retail stores. V. # Discussion and Implications of the Study From the above analysis it was found that there exist significant differences among the different aspects of service quality across the different organized retail stores. From the analysis we found that there exists a significant difference in layout of the different outlets of the retail stores. From the mean value it was found that the layout of Reliance Fresh was found better in comparison to other retail stores and then it was followed by Ebony and it was found minimum in case of Westside. Hence it is recommended that the other stores should improve upon their layout and they should follow Reliance Fresh for improvement. From the same table it was found that there exists a significant difference in safety of transactions among the various outlets. The mean value Reliance fresh was highest and minimum in Vishal Mega-mart. Hence the outlets need to improve their transactions so that customers feel secure with these outlets. It was also found that there exists a significant difference in the parking space. Nowadays parking is becoming a big problem in the big cities. Now parking space is very important to provide safety as well as security to the customers. So it is recommended that these stores should improve upon their parking space so that people feel safe during their visit. From the above analysis it was found that there exists a significant difference in two aspects of customer's satisfaction among the various outlets. In one product service quality and another one is meeting the customers' expectations levels. Hence the outlet needs to improve in these aspects to meet customer satisfaction levels. In case of behavioral aspects we found that there exists significant difference across the different organized retail stores in recommending aspects, whereas there exists no significant differences among the switching aspects and loyalty aspects across the various organized retail stores. ![a) Selection of Stores The selection of organized stores was done on the basis of various factors. a) Stores employing more than 10 People. b) Stores dealing in Products like Food and Grocery, Clothing, Durable and Non Durable Consumer items. b) Questionnaires](image-2.png "") (Female32312430372221197Total85917786765768540Education LevelMatriculation8101911232Diploma613913124360Degree37292623302338206Master Degree26343639252218200Ph.D52Nilnil22314Others335265428Total85917786765768540Income CategoryRelianceBigSpencer'sVishalShoppersWestsideEbonyTotalFreshBazaarMegaStopmartUp-To-15,000 15,001-to-30,000 30,001-to-45,00020 29 1714 25 219 27 157 35 1317 23 186 11 1711 12 1784 162 118Year45,001-to-60,000711888996060,001-to-75,00071261nil9742Above 75,000 Total Marital Status Married Single Total Profession5 85 Reliance Fresh 54 31 85 Fresh Reliance8 91 Big Bazaar 47 44 91 Bazaar Big12 77 Spencer 46 31 77 Spencer22 86 Vishal Mega mart 65 21 86 Mega mart Vishal10 76 Shoppers Stop 43 33 76 Stop Shoppers5 57 Westside 24 33 57 Westside12 68 Ebony 45 23 68 Ebony74 540 Total 324 216 540 TotalVolume XV Issue III Version IAdministrative Professional/28374440302734240( ) E4.1) : Characteristics of the Sample Big Bazaar Spencer's Vishal Mega mart Shopper s Stop 28 18 15 15 4 3 11 10 16 7 3 4 17 9 14 18 17 14 18 14 91 77 86 76 Big Bazaar Spencer's Vishal Mega mart Shoppers Stop 14 19 33 29 33 25 22 29 34 16 20 11 5 7 6 6 5 10 5 1 91 77 86 76 (Gurgaon & Faridabad) and U.P. (Noida & Ghaziabad) Age Reliance Fresh 20-to-25 years 31 Academic 9 Student 9 Own Business 20 Others 19 Total 85 Duration of dealing with outlet Reliance Fresh Less than one year 32 1-to-2 year 41 2-to-3 years 11 3-to-4 years Nil More than 4 years 1 Total 85 From the table 4.1, it is analyzed that from seven retail outlets in this study. f) Service Quality Perception across the various Westside Ebony Total 22 9 138 7 6 50 4 1 44 10 12 100 9 15 106 57 68 540 Westside Ebony Total 18 15 160 23 33 206 11 15 118 1 1 26 4 4 30 57 68 540 1) There were 540 respondents from Delhi, Haryana organized storesGlobal Journal of Management and Business Research25-to-35 years 2) In the analysis of various outlets it is found that 85 31 42354026223423035-to-45 years respondents from Reliance Fresh, 91 from Big Bazaar, 06 13171614090984Above45 years 77 from Spencer's, 86 from Vishal Mega Mart, 76 from 17 87152141688Total Shoppers stop, 57 from Westside and 68 from Ebony. 85 917786765768540GenderMale53605356393547343 (4.2)StatisticsRelianceBigMega VishalShoppersWestside Ebonyvalue FSign.FreshBazaar Spencer'sMartStopI am extremely satisfied with3.723.683.773.633.753.523.71.729.626overall dealing with the outletI am satisfied with my3.773.513.573.533.593.423.581.258.275personal contact with thestaffThe Overall service quality3.983.823.923.733.853.593.891.822.093Provided by the outlet issatisfactoryI am satisfied with the3.903.794.023.673.873.593.772.150.046product service quality of theoutletThe average score of overall3.803.733.783.693.853.544.001.696.120evaluation of Physicalaspects, Reliability, Personal,Problem-solving issatisfactoryMy store always meets my3.753.684.003.543.853.523.772.919.008expectations :4.3FPVishalvalueValueRelianceBigMegaShoppersFreshBazaar Spencer'sMartStopWestside EbonyI would strongly3.823.723.733.683.773.664.041.069.380recommend the outletto customersI will encourage friends3.983.923.763.793.883.594.141.951.041& relatives to buy fromthis outletI would like to switch to3.563.453.353.343.413.533.46.384.889another outlet thatoffers more benefitsI would like to switch to3.703.793.393.683.693.813.891.403.211another outlet if Iexperience a problemwith this outletI would like to continue3.022.943.453.123.122.783.061.670.126with this outlet even ifthe store increases theprices of its productsI would like to complain3.583.583.323.413.693.643.661.080.373if I experience aproblem © 2015 Global Journals Inc. (US) * An Integrated Model for the Effects of Perceived Product, Perceived Service Quality and Perceived Price Fairness on Consumer Satisfaction and Loyalty -TiBei Lien Yu-ChingChiao Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior 14 2001 * A Multistage Model of Customers Assessment of Service Quality and Value RNBolton J HDrew Journal of Consumer Research 17 1991 * A Gap Analysis of Professional Service Quality SWBrown TASwartz Journal of Marketing 53 1 1989 * Customer Retention as a Competitive Weapon PDawkins FReichheld Directors and Boards 14 1990 * A Measure of Service Quality for Retail Stores: Scale Development and Validation PratibhaADhabolkar ThorpeDayle Joseph ORentz Journal of Academy of Marketing Science 24 1 1996 * A National Customer Satisfaction Barometer: The Swedish Experience CFornell Journal of Marketing 56 1 1992 * A Means-End Chain model based on consumer categorization processes JonathanGutman Journal of marketing 46 2 1982 * AGhobadian SSpeller MJones 1993 * Service Quality: Concepts and Models International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management 11 9 * Service Quality: Perceived Value, Expectations, Shortfalls and Bonuses JCGroth RTDye Managing Service Quality 9 4 1999 * A Framework for Comparing Customer Satisfaction across Individuals and Product Categories M DJohnson CFornell Journal of Economic Psychology 12 2 1991 * Impact of Malls on Small Shops and Hawkers AnuradhaKalhan Economic and Political Weekly 2007. June, 2007 * The illusion of India VandanaMaithani 2009 Indian Retail Report * Marketing Research; an Applied Orientation KMalhotra Naresh 2007 Prentice Hall of India 5th Ed * A Cognitive Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions RLOliver Journal of Marketing Research 17 4 1980 * A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and its implications for future research AParasuraman Berry LLeonard ValarieZeithaml A Journal of Marketing 49 1985 * SERVQUAL: A multi-item scale for measuring customer perceptions of service quality AParasuraman Berry LLeonard ValarieZeithaml A Journal of Retailing 64 1 1988 * Reassessment of Expectations as a Comparison Standard in Measuring Service Quality: Implications for Future Research AParasuraman VAZeithaml LLBerry Journal of Marketing 58 1994 * SERVQUAL: A Multiple Item Scale for Measuring Customer Perception of Service Quality AParasuraman VAZeithaml LLBerry Journal of Retailing 64 spring 1988 * Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Services FFReichheld WESasser Harvard Business Review 68 1990. September-October * Rediscovering Satisfaction FournierSusan DavidGlenMick Journal of Marketing 63 4 1999 * FrederickReichheld WSasserJr Earl 1990 * Zero Defections: Quality comes to services Harvard Business Review 68 September/October) * Laddering: extending the repertory grid methodology to construct attribute-consequencevalue hierarchies. Personal Values and Consumer Psychology ThomasJReynolds JonathonGutman 1984 Pitts, Robert, E and Woodside, Arch G., Lexington Books * A Critical Review of Customer Satisfaction YYi Review of Marketing VAZeithaml American Marketing Association 1991. 1990 * Impact of Perceived Service Quality on Customer Loyalty Intentions in Retail Outlets SinghAjmer European Journal of Business Management 4 21 2012 * Relationship between Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction in Organized Retail Outlets SinghAjmer Developing Country Studies 3 1 2013