Paper Title
Service Quality and Customer Loyalty in The Clothing Retail Industry

Abstract
The decline in customer loyalty has become a matter of concern for many service firms and perhaps one of the greatest challenges of many South African retailers. Most importantly, loyal customers contribute towards sales and enhanced profits, which is critical for survival for any business. Thus, in a highly competitive service environment, is it imperative that businesses establish mechanisms to retain customers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the constructs of service quality and customer loyalty within the clothing retail sector with the intention of establishing the existence of a relationship, if any, between both constructs from a manager or owner’s perspective. Towards this end, the study utilised a descriptive qualitative research design driven by the conviction that it would enable the distillation of specific views of members of the target population as it pertains to the service quality and customer loyalty. A Purposive homogenous sampling approach was utilised to identify entrepreneurs in the clothing retail sector operating in Pretoria, South Africa. This approach enabled the identification the key informant given the specific intention of the study to rely on the perceptions of the cohort of clothing retailers in the formal small business sector. Semi-structured interviews were held for eleven participants that made up the study’s respondent group. The principle of data saturation was relied upon to determine the required sample size. Each interview session ran for approximately twenty minutes and the responses elicited were recorded and coded for thematic analysis. The results of the analysis indicate that service quality is a primary element in building relationships with customers. The key determinants of service quality and the criteria for gauging customer loyalty were also ascertained. Conversely, the findings also showed that additional factors such as price and race also impact upon customer retention. The study makes an important theoretical contribution given that it elucidates the constructs of customer loyalty and service quality specifically in the small business clothing retail environment in South Africa from an owner/manager’s perspective. The study’s practical contribution is linked to the fact that issues of service quality remain pertinent even for small clothing retail entrepreneurs, who do not manufacture the products that they sell. This underlines the need for a seemingly heterogeneous approach to service quality underpinned by peculiar considerations of the customers of the clothing retail outlet. Keywords - Service quality, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, customer relationships, clothing retail industry