The Significance of Self-Service Technology Adoption on Service Quality in Linking Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty in Singapore's Supermarket Context

Academic Paper from the year 2020 in the subject Business economics - Market research, grade: 7.0, University of Birmingham, course: research skill, language: English, abstract: In this advanced era, people should be aware of the practicality of technology adoption, especially in service-based businesses. As technology’s efficiencies and its effectiveness had been sensed by both customer and firm, this resulting in a competitive business model among particular service industries; Supermarket businesses. Therefore, the need for a tech-based yet fruitful innovation has become increasingly relevant towards grocery businesses. However, during past decades, numbers of researchers and business experts’ have narrowed their focus to a term called self-service technology (SST). This cutting-edge advancement enhances firm’s performances in productivity and profitability spectrums (Parasuraman, 1996). Next, Meuter et al. (2000) has outlined SST as “technological interfaces that enable customers to obtain services from the staffs of the particular service firm without any direct involvement with them. On the business viewpoint, cost reductions and improved efficiency are the major highlights of having a SST system. With aid of SST, supermarket business can now serve various service demand from customers as SST system is more consistent and stable and it disregard worker’s state of mind who sometimes is affected by personal issue or mood swing. With that so, SST creates a good added value which time and place conveniences are escalated to both supermarket manager and customer. In practices, SST comes in various channels ranging from self-service installations to self-service checkout machine. In this research proposal paper, I will examine the significance of Self-Service Checkouts usage on customer loyalty and their satisfaction given the service quality in the Singapore’s supermarket context with relevant journals and examples considered.