Right attitude is key to success in retailing. In an in-depth work, Dr Rajiv Kaushik probes the relationship between employee attitude and customer satisfaction. His findings, in the case of Ebony, are significantly revealing and useful.

Attitudes are important because they affect job behaviour and efficiency. A good employee attitude towards the company creates a positive effect upon the customer. Several factors go into the making of employee attitude and employee attitude affect employee retention, while employee retention affects what generates customer satisfaction. Each party within a network belongs to other networks, and other relationships can affect the focal relationship. Also, each party has its own perception of the focal relationship and the views may be in harmony or in conflict. For instance, investors may be happy if relationships with currently unprofitable customers are terminated. But customers whose relationships are terminated may, in turn, have relationship with more profitable customers, who may also leave the firm due to reduction in the strength of employees. It may raise the share prices or there may be bad internal climate and poor customer services.

Customer relationship study
This study proposes to enable companies to explore areas of 'employee attitude' still untouched and consequently in helping them to enhance customer satisfaction in more significant ways. By identifying areas of employee's attitude, related problems can be identified in time and, hence, avoided.
Major chain outlets in organised sector include Shopper's Stop, Ebony, Big Bazaar, West side, Globus, Subhiksha and Reliance Digital. The present study is restricted to Ebony stores (in organised retail sector). It is carried out under the core objective that positive employee attitude increases customer satisfaction and negative employee attitude leads to customer dissatisfaction.
Ebony stores are leading stores and have large footfalls. The figure touches a whooping 8,000 people everyday and goes doubled over the weekends. Characterised by comfortable, unobtrusive and spacious ambience, Ebony stores cater to the need of over 50% of a consumer's shopping basket. It is also the first organised retail player to enter Chandigarh and Noida. Ebony has two large format stores: each spread across an enormous 35,000 sq. ft in these cities. Other cities and towns where Ebony operates include Faridabad, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Amritsar and New Delhi.

Research objectives
1. To analyse the employee attitude towards customer satisfaction.
2. To find out customer satisfaction level due to employee's behaviour.
3. To find out customer perception about Ebony's employees in comparison to other retailers.

Analysis
One particular answer that most customers gave sums up the entire staff's behaviour towards the customer. The answer was that most employees did not possess the attitude to take initiative, extending thereby poor service or leading to bad experience of service. Employees, felt customers, had a 'fascination' only for their assigned sections. In the absence of an employee, the fill-in, if deployed, paid less attention towards the customers. However, harmonious relationship prevailed between different sections of employees as most of them knew each other. Except for a few customers, services at Ebony were relatively better than those offered at other stores. As regards customer promotion offers at Ebony, customers expressed their feeling with a grouch.While most customers said that they visited Ebony on weekends, there were others who visited the outlet particularly during festival or sale days. Some customers said that they avoided Ebony mostly because of 'high prices'. On the other hand, absence of sitting arrangement, no provision for physically disabled persons and employees' non-caring and appearing least interested attitudes were the reasons for avoiding Ebony. There was a common consensus among customers on why they like Ebony: good ambience, variety and quality.
As far as purchase was concerned, men's, ladies' and kids' wear; perfumes and gifts categories constituted the main sections. Furniture purchase was very limited. Except some selected products, customers did not purchase products of Ebony because of price and selection.For other products, Ebony customers visit shops like Archies, Westside, Adidas, Levi's, exclusive outlets, Big Jos, Shyam Garments, Ahuja Garments, Woodland, Raymond, Pantaloons, Tanishq, Nike, Wrangler, Peter England, Bata Reebok, Arrow, Vishal, Lee Cooper, Sport king and Big Bazaar. Apart from these, some customers also visit local shops.
The author is Assistant Professor, MBA Department, Vaish College of Engineering, Rohtak, Haryana. He can be contacted at 9416087924 and rajivkaushik_trince @rediffmail.com