Volume 29, Issue 5, 2020
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.1003
Integrating After Sale Service into the Traditional Marketing Mix Model. Their Effects on Service Value and Customer Retention towards Clothing Store Brands in China
Abstract
The clothing store brands literature exposed the inadequacy of the standard marketing mix approach. Recent authors have proposed to analyze service marketing mix (SMM) for "clothing store brands" because of this shortage by accepting an additional significant aspect, namely after-sales service. This research therefore investigated and incorporated the one new dimension of the service marketing mix instead of following the conventional 7 P’s of SMM. This study also investigated the impact of SMM store brands (promotion, place, people, product, price, process, physical evidence and after sale service) on service value and customer retention to clothing store brands in China. This is due to the fact that in a competitive market, clothing store brands providers from "China" compete with each other, as there are so many new entrants selling and offering similar products and services. Therefore, retention becomes a challenge. Convenience sampling technique data were collected from surveys conducted with different people in different positions, e.g. professor, PhD students, MSc students and BSc students of different nationalities. In "China" the sampling technique data were used to obtain data from store brands where customers have ever bought clothing store brands in China. This study gathered a total of 385 usable questionnaires and analyzed the data using the Partial Least Square Method. The result showed that the service marketing mix has a significant positive impact both directly and indirectly on customer retention through service Value. This study will be of interest to the clothing store brands industry to understand how marketing mix approaches are important for sustaining a long-term customer relationship.
Keywords
Service marketing mix, service value, customer retention, clothing store brands, after sale service, China.