Today,service organizations are shifting their focus from “transactional exchange” to “relational exchange” for developing mutually satisfying relationship with customers. Extended relationships are reported to have a significant impact on transaction cost and profitability, and customer lifetime value. Serving the customers, in true sense, is the need of the hour as the customer was, is and will remain the central focus of all organizational activities. The retail sector or supermarkets industry, especially the super markets needs to be purely customer-centric and focus on the customer needs and duly fulfill them.

Customers will not blindly accept poor service quality from a Supermarket. They expect high quality of service in return for the money, they spend in Supermarkets. This paper is an attempt to explain the dark side of CRM in the segment of the Supermarket industry with the help of the ‘Gap Model’ referred to in …