The Relationship between Customer Satisfaction and Service Quality with Special Reference to the Hypermarkets in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

In recent years, customer satisfaction has been a subject of great interest in order to maximize the profit levels of the organizations. The quality of service provided by the organizations has become an important aspect of customer satisfaction. It has been a universal fact that service quality is proportionally related to customer satisfaction. It is obvious that customers play an important role in the organizational process (Lee & Ritzman, 2005, p. 92). Building customer relationship means delivering superior value over competitors to the target customers (Kotler et al., 2002, p. 391). Many companies are adopting quality management programs which aim at improving the quality of their products and marketing processes, because it has been proven that “quality has a direct impact on product performance, and thus on customer satisfaction” (Kotler et al., 2002, p. 8).

The primary objective of this study is to examine the relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality in retail sectors with respect to the service quality dimensions with special reference to the hypermarkets in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).