Page 255 - DMGT552_VISUAL_MERCHANDISING

Visual Merchandising

Notes In this unit, we will study, Quality and Process in Visual Merchandising. We will also focus on
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

13.1 Quality and Process

Visual merchandising or display is “showing” merchandise and concepts at their very best, with
the end purpose of making a sale. Efficient quality and process are the main requisites of this
VM.

13.1.1 Service Quality Delivery and Maintenance

Consumer spending is under pressure. With many retailers chasing ever fewer rupees with the
very same merchandise, tremendous price competition has ensued. However, only the largest
retailers with huge economies of scale are winning this game. There are opportunities to succeed
other than offering the best deal, but retailers are having trouble exploiting them because they
are unable to differentiate their businesses, respond to changing demographics, or contain
contact centre costs without negatively impacting customer service and sales.

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Caution Retailers that are able to define and implement solutions to these challenges are
those that will successfully compete and thrive into the future.
Service quality is a concept that has aroused considerable interest and debate in the research
literature because of the difficulties in both defining it and measuring it with no overall consensus
emerging on either (Wisniewski, 2001). There are a number of different “definitions” as to what
is meant by service quality. One that is commonly used defines service quality as the extent to
which a service meets customers’ needs or expectations (Lewis and Mitchell, 1990; Dotchin and
Oakland, 1994a; Asubonteng et al., 1996; Wisniewski and Donnelly, 1996). Service quality can
thus be defined as the difference between customer expectations of service and perceived service.
If expectations are greater than performance, then perceived quality is less than satisfactory and
hence customer dissatisfaction occurs (Parasuraman et al., 1985; Lewis and Mitchell, 1990).

Always there exists an important question: why should service quality be measured?

Did u know? Measurement allows for comparison before and after changes, for the location
of quality related problems and for the establishment of clear standards for service delivery.
Edvardsen et al. (1994) state that in their experience, the starting point in developing quality in
services is analysis and measurement.
There are seven major gaps in the service quality concept. The model is an extension of
Parasuraman et al. (1985). According to the following explanation (ASI Quality Systems, 1992;
Curry, 1999; Luk and Layton, 2002), the three important gaps, which are more associated with
the external customers, are Gap1, Gap5 and Gap6; since they have a direct relationship with
customers.
Gap 1: Customers’ expectations versus management perceptions: as a result of the lack of a
marketing research orientation, inadequate upward communication and too many layers of
management.

Gap 2: Management perceptions versus service specifications: as a result of inadequate
commitment to service quality, a perception of unfeasibility, inadequate task standardisation
and an absence of goal setting.

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