Application for Work Sampling in the Retail Trade

In scientific literature a significant number of publications about work sampling can be found. For the most part these are related to the industrial sector as well as to the health service, in particular hospitals. As far as the application of work sampling in the retail trade is concerned, only a very limited number of publications can be found. These usually focus on small retail companies or single sections of department stores. The authors of the article have carried out work sampling studies in three large-area stores of a German retail chain. In the first part of their article, the authors describe the goals and context of the study. In the second part, important resulting requirements from the goals and specific framework conditions of retail trade are transferred to the study. The procedure during the implementation of these requirements is then roughly described. In the third part of the article, selected results of the study including a correlation analysis are presented and interpreted.