Service quality has been underscored as a viable strategy for marketers endeavouring to differentiate their service offerings, establishing customer value and ultimately satisfying customer needs. Service quality has been used increasingly by service and goods marketers to leverage customer loyalty, confront the challenges of competition and ultimately deliver on organization profitability. The aim of this research study was therefore to determine the indicators o f service quality to customers in petroleum retail outlets, to establish the extent to which service quality influences customer perception in petroleum retail outlets and finally to identify any other factor that may also play a role in influencing customer choice. A structured questionnaire was collected to gather the relevant data. A total of 300 respondents' were drawn from Coimbatore City. Statistical tools used for the study was descriptive analysis and chi-square test. The study concludes that most of the petrol station customers are able to identify relevant service quality indicators and that service quality indicators influences customer choice to a great extent. It further identifies several other factors that also influence customer preference in the choice of petroleum retail outlets.

KEYWORDS: Service quality, customer loyalty, petroleum retail outlets, Service