Linking Retail Service Quality, Satisfaction and Perceived Value to Customer Behavioral Intentions: Evidence from Serbia

In increasingly competitive business environment the issue of service customer loyalty, its determinants and their relative impact on customers' future behavior have been gaining rising prominence among Services Marketing researchers and practitioners. Despite ample empirical evidence pointing out to service quality, customer satisfaction, perceived value as the main drivers of customer loyalty and numerous examinations of their interrelatedness and relative impact on customer behavioral intentions, vast majority of previous studies have been conducted in the U.S. and western country context, whereas developing economies have largely been neglected. This especially pertains to Serbia and its increasingly competitive retailing industry. Therefore the overriding objective of this paper is to examine complex interrelationships among service quality, satisfaction, value and their relative impact on customer behavioral intentions in Serbian grocery retail context. In line with frequently highlighted context and culture-specific nature of service quality construct and due to the dearth of empirical studies of service quality in Serbian retail setting, literature review and group discussions with retail customers were perfomed first. Qualitative research yielded initial pool of service quality items, which was later on refined on the basis of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and validated applying confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Quantitative analysis proceeded with the examination of structural relationships among key service evaluation constructs. Data were analyzed using SPSS 18 and LISREL 8.80. According to the study's findings customer satisfaction, influenced by perceptions of service quality and value, exerts the strongest total effect on customer behavioral intentions, followed by perceived value and service quality. Theoretical and managerial implications of the study have been discussed and limitations and directions for future research highlighted.