798 The Marketing Book
the changes to the Sunday Trading Act, most
large stores in England and Wales now open for
six hours on Sundays, usually longer in Scot-
land. On other days, some stores in busy urban
areas now open for 24 hours a day, including
many Tesco superstores (Morgan Stanley Dean
Witter, 2001).
At the third level, services have pro-
liferated but competitive advantage is usually
short-lived if the service is easily copied. The
problem is that expectations shift rapidly as
services lose their novelty and become institu-
tionalized. Consequently, the acceptance of
debit and credit cards spread very rapidly in
most sectors, now being anticipated. Marks &
Spencer and John Lewis were reluctant to offer
credit services, other than their own, but
eventually gave in to the pressure of consumer
expectations.
At the fourth level, retailers and shopping
centres have instituted pledges and guarantees
that they will ‘do it well’. The law imposes
liability for defective products but the returns
policies of retailers such as Marks & Spencer go
far beyond the requirement of the law. This
removes much of the risk from the negative side
of the value equation, discussed earlier. Centres
such as Meadowhall near Sheffield have issued
various detailed guarantees of service levels, for
customers in general, for motorists, for families
and for disabled shoppers.
Various scales have been applied to the
measurement of retail service quality, including
SERVQUAL and the more specific Retail
Service Quality scale (Dabholkar et al., 1996).
However, retailers have been warned against
excessive reliance upon satisfaction scores,
which can become an end in themselves. Some
make use of ‘mystery shoppers’ to visit their
stores and to provide relatively objective
assessments of their service encounters.
Human resources
With around 14 million people employed in
retailing in Europe (Eurostat, 1997) and 2.5
million in Great Britain, it is clear that retailing
is a ‘people business’. Retailers also face the
challenge that their lowest paid staff interface
directly with their customers. Imagine how
images of cars or chocolates would change if
customers dealt directly with assembly line
workers, rather than receiving these images
through carefully crafted advertisements.
In retailing, the shelf packers, cleaners and
checkout operators all represent key compo-
nents of the service experience. This highlights
the need for careful selection and training;
overall, the need for an effective human
resource function (see Marchington, in McGol-
drick, 1994). Large retail chains also have the
challenge of communicating their mission,
values and expectations to a large and geo-
graphically dispersed staff.
There are of course some retail contexts
within which staff hold highly creative selling
roles. In the retailing of fashion goods, cars or
other major durables, the sales staff are expec-
ted to combine extensive product knowledge
with the skills of personal selling. Here, in
particular, the value of effective training is most
manifest: as Figure 30.10 illustrates, training
can contribute to profitability through reduced
costs, higher sales, better service and improved
customer relationships.Information and logistics
The logistics role is largely unseen by most
customers, becoming more apparent when it
fails to maintain stock levels. Out-of-stock
conditions may cause not only the immediate
loss of item sales, but also undermine customer
loyalty by increasing the need to shop else-
where. The efficient management of the supply
chain is therefore a key strategic function.
The benefits of checkout scanning equip-
ment to supply chain management are starting
to be fully realized. ‘Efficient consumer
response’ (ECR) developments include the
sharing of live data with some major suppli-
ers, with the effect of increasing stock avail-
ability, improving choice for customers, reduc-
ing stock levels and improving stockturns. At