The development of the final scale to be used in the phase one of the study

The new modified scale used for this study was divided into three sections: the first section contained five demographic questions which required respondents to choose an option related to age, gender, marital status, education level and income level. The second section contained 40 items that asked respondents to choose a number on the Likert scale that best describes the way they feel about shopping at Al Waha: 1 strongly disagree, 2 disagree, 3 neither agree nor disagree, 4 agree and 5 strongly agree. The third section contained four questions: one to measure the overall service quality, one question to measure loyalty, one question to measure satisfaction and the last question in the section to measure frequency of visits.

Some additional questions were added to the scale to fully address the research questions.

To measure the overall service quality of Al Waha, one item was used: ―Overall, how would you rate the quality of service you receive at Al Waha?‖ This same question was used to measure overall service quality in a study on hotels in Turkey. It examined the SERVQUAL in an international setting and found that one item is an appropriate measure (Akbaba, 2006). This is similar to another study that used one question to measure overall service quality in a UK football stadium (Martin et al., 2008). Jamal & Anastasiadou (2009) argue that using a single item to measure overall service quality is more appropriate than using an aggregate approach for the overall service quality. Using an aggregate approach is not recommended when an analysis is done at the dimensional level and when investigating the relationships between the dimensions, satisfaction and loyalty(Jamal &

Anastasiadou, 2009). Another study by Gilbert & Veloutsou (2006) also used one item in its attempt to find the main themes of customer satisfaction in six different industries and the responses were measured on a five point Likert scale ranging from 5 = very good to 1=

very poor.

One item was used to measure the overall satisfaction of the customers with the services of Al Waha and this item is similar to an item that was added by Nadiri & Hussain (2005) when they measured perception of service quality in a Cyprus hotel. The question was:

―Overall, how satisfied are you with Al Waha services?‖ Another study that examined the relationship between the stores attributes and customer satisfaction and the effect of customer satisfaction on sales performance used one question to measure overall customer satisfaction (Gomez, McLaughlin & Wittink, 2004). Many researchers have used one item to measure customer satisfaction and found it sufficient (Diaz-Martiz et al., 2000; Choi &

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Chu, 2001; Drolet & Morrison, 2001; Voss et al., 2004; Baumann et al., 2007; Howat, Crilley & McGrath, 2008).

There is no consensus on the number of items to measure loyalty. Some researchers used as many as twelve items to measure loyalty (Wong & Sohal, 2003). In their study, Wong and Sohal (2003) tried to measure the impact of loyalty on service quality dimensions in a chain store in Australia using a mix of loyalty items from different scales. Other

researchers used two items to measure service quality (Yen & Gwinner, 2003; Howat, Crilley & McGrath, 2008) and found that more than one item for measuring loyalty probably provides a better measure than using just one (Soderlund, 2006). In a study to measure loyalty in a DIY (Do It Yourself) loyalty programme, three questions were used (Vesel & Zabkar, 2009). Other researchers recommend a single item measure of loyalty

―How likely is it that you would recommend (company X) to a friend or colleague?‖

(Murray & Howat, 2002; Reichheld, 2003). According to Reichheld (2003) the most effective question, based on a survey that involved 4,000 consumers for measuring loyalty across different industries, is the aforementioned single item question. Additional support from Soderlund (2006), argues that if loyalty is the focus of the research, then an aggregate measurement of loyalty is not appropriate, meaning more than one item is needed. Based on the above discussion, the author used a single item to measure loyalty on a 5 point Likert scale with 5 being extremely likely, 4 likely, 3 not likely, 2 unlikely, and 1 extremely unlikely. This is deemed appropriate, as the focus of this research is not customer loyalty. According to Vesel & Zabkar (2009), measuring loyalty by asking customers about how much they like the shop or if they will recommend the shop to others is called attitudinal measurement. On the other hand behavioural measurement is

concerned with the frequency of visits, purchase history and the amount of money spent in the shop.

One item was used to measure the frequency of visits at Al Waha and this item is similar to an item that was added by (Akbaba, 2006) when they measured service quality in a Turkish hotel. The question is ―How often do you visit Al Waha?‖ A study by Johnson, Sivadas

& Garbarino (2008) found affective commitment is positively related to frequency and duration of customer visits. Another study that assessed electronic service quality used a question to ask customers how often they visited the website (Parasuraman, Zeithaml &

Malhotra, 2005).

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The relationship between service quality dimensions satisfaction and loyalty was tested at the dimensional level by many authors such as Jamal & Anastasiadou (2009), (Zhou, 2004) and (Al-Tamimi & Al-Amiri, 2003). Three items out of the four items added at the end of the questionnaire are similar to three items used in a study to measure service quality in Turkish banks by Karatepe, Yavas & Babakus (2005); the study used a single item to measure overall service quality; a single item to measure overall customer satisfaction and a single item question to measure the purchase intention. The questions are:

1. Overall, how would you rate the quality of service you received in Al Waha?

2. Overall, how satisfied are you with Al Waha services?

3. How likely is it that you would recommend Al Waha to a friend or colleague?

4. Frequency of visits

The new modified RSQS scale can be seen in Appendix 4.

3.10 Conclusion

This chapter gave an overview of the methodology used in this study which was selected to support the objectives of the study. The researcher followed an objective epistemology and a positivist approach as these approaches are usually used in service quality studies. A survey was used in this study as part of the quantitative approach. The original RSQS scale was modified to be more context specific and culturally sensitive. Based on the interviews the RSQS scale was modified by adding twelve items to make it more

appropriate for the college shop. Each question that was based on the interviews was then linked to the literature review to make the process more robust. This resulted in a 40 items scale which was used in the phase one of the study to ensure the scale was suitable for the main study.

The researcher followed the steps recommended by Churchill (1979) when modifying the scale, by reviewing the literature to find the most suitable scale, then generating items to be used for the new scale was done based on the interviews. Data was collected for the phase one of the study by distributing a total of 350 questionnaires and 303 were found to be usable. Factor analysis was used as part of purifying the pilot scale which resulted in the deletion of 18 items. The new 22 item scale was subjected to reliability and validity tests to make sure it was appropriate for the main study. After scale purification was performed the reliability and validity of the scale was tested. The final step was to test the hypotheses and reach conclusions. The new scale was used in the main study and 500 questionnaires were distributed of which 424 were used in the data analysis.

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All of the previously mentioned steps were part of achieving objective one which is to create a scale that is suitable and usable for the college shop. The second objective was to test the relationship between the service quality dimensions and overall service quality, satisfaction, loyalty and frequency of visits. To achieve this, regression analysis was performed to establish the relationship between the service quality dimensions and overall service quality, satisfaction and loyalty. Correlation analysis was performed to find the strength of the relationship between the service quality dimensions and frequency of visits.

The third objective of the study was to test the difference between service quality dimensions and demographic information.

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Chapter 4

The Modified Scale:

Phase One

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Chapter 4: The Modified Scale: Phase One