Author(s): Dr. Priti Bakhshi and Dr. Charu Dubey
The purpose of the study is to understand the relationships between service quality of a retail outlet, customer commitment towards the retail outlet, and their tendency to communicate his/her experience with others through word of mouth (WoM). The population for the study is the retail shoppers across different 5 big cities one each from east, west, north, south, and central India, consisting of a mix of gender, income levels, age levels, and marital status. From this population, a random sample of 1000 was drawn which was then split randomly into two sets to test the hypothesis. Structured Equation Modelling is used to study the objectives of the Study. It is found in the study that both affective and continuance commitments jointly mediate the influence of retail service quality on WoM communication. Continuance commitment also mediates the influence of affective commitment on WoM communication. Quality of services enhances the customer commitment towards the store and customer commitment leads to propagating the in-store experience to other likely customers. As genders behave differently, proper practice should be taken into consideration while providing the service. Also, Retailers should adopt all those practices of providing quality services which can result in positive word of mouth communication.