Products, services, and consumer perceptions of service quality in the retail floral industry of Texas

Surveys were conducted to describe the range of products and services offered by Texas florists and supermarket floral departments. Approximately 50% of Texas supermarkets were offering cut flowers and plants on a regular basis. Florists and supermarket floral departments were compared on the number and kind of floral and floral-related products and services regularly offered. A significant number of supermarket floral departments were carrying a wide range of products and offering a variety of traditional florist services. There were relatively few differences between the florists and floral departments regarding the range of products offered. The florists, however, were providing a broader variety of services.;The florists and supermarkets were also compared on several business management and operations variables. The two retailer groups differed in the percent of perishable floral sales attributed to cut flower products and to plants. Recent and planned service-related changes of the two retailer groups were investigated.;An adapted SERVQUAL instrument was used to measure customer perceptions of floral service quality. Based on their SERVQUAL expectations scores, the florist and supermarket floral customers were very similar. Both customer groups considered reliability to be the most important of the SERVQUAL dimensions, and tangibles the least important dimension.;Based on perceptions scores, the florist customers perceived a higher quality of service from florists than the supermarket customers perceived from floral departments. There were significant differences between the florist and supermarket customer groups on the demographic and floral buying variables investigated. Service quality perceptions and several of the demographic variables were related, suggesting the potential for market segmentation based on service quality perceptions. Conditioned upon further research, the SERVQUAL instrument was judged to be useful for measuring consumer perceptions of floral service quality.;The florist and supermarket customer groups were compared on the relative importance attributed to five floral retailing characteristics. For the florist customers, flower quality was most important, followed by service quality, custom design and flower price, and flower assortment. For the supermarkets, flower quality was most important, followed by flower price and flower assortment, service quality, and custom design.