Service convenience: appropriation and adaptation of a measurement scale

Abstract

The work seeks to fit the Service Convenience Scale - SERVCON (SEIDERS, VOSS and GODFREY, 2007), to the Brazilian retail reality, in particular to the free-stand location commerce. We Assume that the five dimensions identified in the original work are not broad enough to permit proper evaluation of service convenience in most of the Brazilian cities reality. The research involved a focus group to identify a wider set of variables and two surveys: the first one collected a sample of 268 undergraduate students and the second one surveyed 206 non academic customers. Two new dimensions were identified and added to the five original ones with acceptable levels of fit and validity. Results indicated that lack of security, barriers restricting customers’ mobility, and bad regulation of informality interfere in the convenience assessment and therefore must be included in the instrument.