ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we investigate customer service and service quality management in fashion retail supply chains. First, we discuss the importance of customer service in fashion retail supply chain management. Second, we propose different quantitative performance measures for customer service management. Third, we review the conceptual retail service quality scale (RSQS) model for fashion retailing. Fourth, based on the RSQS model, we build a formal analytical model and derive the optimal service level for the fashion retailer and the whole fashion retail supply chain. We then prove that under the pure wholesale pricing contract in a decentralized fashion retail supply chain, the optimal retail service level is lower than the optimal service level for the fashion retail supply chain system. Thus, the decentralized fashion retail supply chain with the pure wholesale pricing contract is not optimal. As a result, we propose a “wholesale pricing and revenue sharing scheme’’ based consignment contract to coordinate the fashion retail supply chain system and achieve the all-win situation in which the upstream supplier, the downstream fashion retailer and the consumers will all benefit. We also present an illustrative numerical example. Finally, we examine the Deming’s Quality Management Framework with Deming’s famous fourteen points. For each of Deming’s points, we further discuss the implications for service quality management in fashion retail supply chain systems.
