Title: Discount retailing, a European test case for perceived value as a basis for shaping the firm's offer

Authors: Claudio Vignali; Gianpaolo Vignali; Daniella Vignali Ryding

Addresses: The Business School, Leeds Metropolitan University, Rose Bowl, Leeds LS1, UK. ' Hollings Faculty, Manchester Metropolitan University, Old Hall Lane, Manchester M14 6hr, UK. ' The Business School, The University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancs PR1, UK

Abstract: According to the representative studies, higher level of perceived value leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction, greater levels of customer loyalty and to a greater success of organisations. Due to this, firm has to identify the factors of perceived value in order to offer the value which customers want. If the difference between customer's and firm's perception exists then the service gap appears and customers do not receive the service which they wanted. The purpose of this paper is to define how the service provider should create its offer based on customer perceived value, which dimensions of the offer should be improved for attracting more customers and maintaining the existing ones and which gaps should be avoided. In addition to the theoretical framework in the article is presented an example of the discount retailing in Croatia between Konsum and Lidle and how they should design their offer.

Keywords: customer perceived value; firm perception; service gap; Konsum; Lidle; Balkan retailing; discount retailing; customer satisfaction; customer loyalty; Croatia.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2012.045398

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2012 Vol.8 No.2, pp.239 - 255

Published online: 14 Aug 2014 *

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