It started out as an academic puzzle of sorts. The researchers already knew that in the airline industry, customers and employees revere Southwest Airlines. With computers, Dell stands out as superior in customer satisfaction. And Toyota remains the company to emulate in the automobile industry. But when it comes to the retail industry, what company sets the standards for customer and employee satisfaction?
"In pretty much any other industry segment, you can say, 'Here is a company that is the best at something,'" says Serguei Netessine, Wharton professor of operations and information management. "But in retailing, there is no clear company to follow. There is no Toyota in retailing."
Netessine, Marshall Fisher, Jayanth Krishnan and Daniel Corsten have begun two closely related projects to find out what drives success in the disparate world of retailing as measured by profitability and long-term growth. Fisher is co-director of Wharton's Fishman-Davidson Center for Service and Operations Management. Krishnan is a Wharton doctoral student and Corsten is vice director, Kuehne-Institute for Logistics, at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
Their preliminary conclusions as to what drives success reflect a maxim long held in the service industry but only recently thought to pertain to the retail sector -- namely, customer satisfaction. While this finding alone is not a surprise, some unexpected results surfaced when the four operations experts decided to try and pinpoint exactly what promotes customer satisfaction and helps shoppers differentiate one retailer from another, a process that they feel has until now received little academic review. Among their conclusions:
· Customer satisfaction is partially driven by inventory availability, when shoppers actually find what they are looking for on the store shelf.
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