Department of Civil Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas, United States of America.
Department of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Cyprus International University, Nicosia, Republic of Cyprus.
PLoS One. 2022 Feb 25;17(2):e0264423. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264423. eCollection 2022.
Success in the retail sector is highly dependent on customer satisfaction. Maintaining a competitive edge depends upon the service providers knowing and enacting what is important to their customers. Multiple studies have employed various research approaches to identifying characteristics of customer satisfaction in different sectors as well as retail sector. However, very few have determined such characteristics using multiple approaches simultaneously in the retail store. This study aims to identify, categorize, and rank the retail store attributes, based on their effects on customer satisfaction. A survey focusing on retail store characteristics that impact customer satisfaction was developed and distributed. Over 400 responses were collected and evaluated, using the Kano model. Results showed that visually appealing facilities and error-free transactions are of prime importance to customers. They are taken for granted, but their absence plays a significant role in customer dissatisfaction. An easy-to-navigate store layout and readily available service increase customer satisfaction, but their absence doesn't decrease customer satisfaction. Clean public areas and modern-looking equipment are important, and improvements to them increase customer satisfaction at a proportional rate. The findings of this study will assist service providers in realizing the relative importance of the attributes of retail stores and in evaluating the impacts of their current practices on customer satisfaction levels. Such importance will also help retail sector policy makers in mandating policies focusing on must-have attributes to preserve customer satisfaction.
零售行业的成功高度依赖于客户满意度。保持竞争优势取决于服务提供商了解并实施对客户重要的内容。多项研究采用了各种研究方法来确定不同领域以及零售行业的客户满意度特征。然而，很少有研究同时使用多种方法来确定零售店的特征。本研究旨在根据其对客户满意度的影响来识别、分类和排列零售店属性。开发并分发了一项侧重于影响客户满意度的零售店特征的调查。使用卡诺模型收集和评估了超过 400 份回复。结果表明，视觉上吸引人的设施和无差错的交易对客户至关重要。它们是理所当然的，但它们的缺失会在很大程度上导致客户不满。易于浏览的店面布局和随时可用的服务会提高客户满意度，但它们的缺失不会降低客户满意度。清洁的公共区域和现代化的设备很重要，对这些方面的改进会按比例提高客户满意度。这项研究的结果将帮助服务提供商认识到零售店属性的相对重要性，并评估其当前做法对客户满意度水平的影响。这种重要性也将有助于零售行业的政策制定者制定专注于必备属性的政策，以维护客户满意度。
