An exploratory study on service dimensions of regional shopping centres: A segmentation approach’

Despite the advent of e-retailing and other shopping alternatives in the retailing sector, the ‘one-stop’ regional shopping centre remains a popular retail format. ServQual and ServPerf have been used to measure the service quality of individual retail stores on five key dimensions, namely reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness. However, these dimensions appear to be less relevant for measuring the performance of the ‘one-stop’ regional shopping centre that comprises a mix of anchors, specialty stores and service outlets. This study revealed a set of eight factors that may better reflect the service dimensions of regional centres, namely personal service, ambulance, amenity, ambience, entertaining service, merchandise mix, access and proximity. Further, this study revealed four distinct shopper segments of regional centres namely, the ‘experiential’ shopper, the ‘serious’ shopper, the ‘apathetic’ shopper, and the ‘service’ shopper.