term paper monika ii sem

8/3/2019 Term Paper Monika II Sem

1/11

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION:

A STUDY OF BANKING FACILITIES OF JODHPUR

Abstract

Services and Banks are the basis to the human facilitating themselves in any society

reflected by the availability of good Banking services related to human comfort.Customer satisfaction is basis of building the quality services of the human comfort

operating in any society. A satisfied customer is the basis for building good sustainable

models to operate in the society. The Banking sector in India has witnessed severalregulatory changes in the last few decades. The impact of technology has changed

landscape of serving the Customers of the banks where the competition has become

intense and retaining the human personnel is important for the survival of bankingbusiness. Banks help to provide the basis for the development of healthy society so that

the people can live a life of respect and dignity. The basic objective of this paper is

design the strategic framework for enhancing the customer satisfaction for the banking

sector of the city of Jodhpur.

Key words service quality, banking industry, facilities, technology

Introduction

The objective of this paper is to examine the consumer behaviour with respect to

banking, and to explore the possibility of blending these banking systems. The paper also

suggests strategies to banks to maximize the value of services to consumers. The primarydata used in the research consists of survey conducted on a sample of 100 consumers.

(Taylor, 1997) The survey includes in jodhpur city of India, instrument being

questionnaires filled up from the consumers and personal interaction, discussions withthe front line executives of banking divisions of the major players, particularly their

marketing and customer servicing departments and the banking experts, personal visits at

Automated Teller Machine (ATMs), Point of Sale (POS) counters of major banks. Themajor assumptions in this research are (a) the behaviour of the surveyed population viz.

consumers and bankers confirms to a normal distribution. The study limits itself to major

cities given the fact that Internet Banking has no geographical boundaries.

In the services marketing literature, it is generally agreed that service quality, customersatisfaction and loyalty are important constructs. These are especially critical in people-

intensive sectors like retail banking industry. In todays competitive business world many

firms are focusing their efforts on achieving and maintaining a loyal customer base.

According to Caruana (2002) loyal customers are the foundation of any business.Customer soften rely on intangible aspects to decide whether to become loyal client. In

this aspect it can be noted that, various factors are important to customers to make such a

decision and thus a better understanding of customer loyalty especially to service sectoris really needed.

To do so first of all it is important to identify the antecedents of loyalty. Bloemer et al

(1998) argued that a more feasible approach for banks is to focus on less tangibledeterminants of customer loyalty like satisfaction. So, it can be argued that to establish

loyal customer base, banks need to put effort to increase customer satisfaction. Customer

1


2/11

satisfaction plays a vital role in establishing loyalty and at the same time it is also notedthat there are various factors that lead to satisfaction towards the bank. On the other hand,

identifying and understanding the antecedents of customer satisfaction is a critical issue

foracademicians as well as bankers. Considerable researchers (e.g. Parasuraman, et al.,

1988 and Zeithaml, et al., 1990) have pointed out service quality as the key factors ofsatisfaction.

The concept of satisfaction, service quality and loyalty are related to each other. In this

paper the researchers tried to establish satisfaction as an important factor behind loyaltyand also to find out their relationship. At the same time, the researchers also wanted to

develop a conceptual framework that incorporates loyalty, satisfaction and service

quality. After dealing with the conceptual issues researchers have collected data througha questionnaire and also discussed the results of the empirical study that has been done to

seek the answers of the research questions.

Service Quality in Banks

In the service quality literature, it is generally agreed that different people understand

different things regarding the service quality as a multidimensional notion. Bolton and

Drew (1991); and Oliver (1980) defined customers' service quality as the difference

between the actual service performance and their expectations. Similar to Bolton andDrew (1991); and Oliver (1980), Parasuraman et al. (1988: p19) characterised perceived

service quality as "the degree and direction of discrepancy between customers'

perceptions and expectations".

"Service quality has been variously defined as focusing on meeting needs and

requirements, and how well the service delivered matches customers' expectations"(Lewis 1993: p 22). They also proposed that "service quality is a global consumer

judgement or attitude, relating to service and results from comparisons by consumers

expectations of service with their perception of actual service performance" (Lewis,

1991; p 53). Service quality is the distinction between consumers' expectations forservice performance and their perceptions of the service received. Zeithaml and Bitner

(1996, p 45) defined perceived service quality as the judgement of a customer about the

overall excellence or superiority of a product or service. They also defined service qualityas, "the delivery of excellent or superior service relative to customer expectations".

Literature review

Quality is an important attribute of the service industry. Services have some exceptional

characteristics that ma ke them different from physical products. To produce a servicemay or may not require the use of tangible goods. There are some fundamental

characteristics of services like intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity, and

perishability (Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996). The most notable thing is that it is often

difficult for customers to evaluate services at pre-consumption, consumption and post-consumption stage. On the other hand, due to intangible nature of services, organisation

may also face difficulty to understand how its customers perceive and evaluate the

quality of its services?In the recent years, service researches have revealed a variety of customer-based

improvement strategies based on the specific service elements, suggesting action plans

for different service requirements that demand managerial action. Results of these studieshave facilitated in competitive positioning of those service components which are

2


3/11

directly tied to the organization's success. The present study is an endeavor to evolve atruly customer-centric service system based on customers assessment of service quality.

Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction: The distinction and association between

service quality and customer satisfaction remains at the forefront of many academic- and practitioner-oriented research endeavors (Spreng and Mackoy, 1995). The customer

satisfaction is important for the service industry also. (Bitner, 1990).

In the findings of the past research by Oliver (1989), an attempt has been made to study

the influence of service quality on the levels of customer satisfaction. The service quality

is determined by its various components and is part of satisfaction (Parsuraman1988).

According to Spreng and Mackoy (1996), the perceived service quality is an antecedent

to satisfaction...In an attempt to study the service gap, Dash and Kumar (2007) revealed that customers

expectations exceeded their perceptions, with regards to various dimensions of service

quality. They further claimed that perception of either positive or negative service quality

was related to the customers future behavioral intentions. Therefore, if a positive qualitygap exists, the customers would tend to comment positively about the service. On the

contrary, a negative quality gap would result in customers complaining, switching to

other service providers, commenting negatively about the provider or just decreasing theusage of the service. Hence it is recommended that the banks should continuously

monitor the service quality levels so as to avoid erosion of service quality and migration

or switching by customers to other banks.. Thus they recommended that banks should envisage a strategy to serve customers with

different facilities & services backgrounds.

Amudha and Banu (2007) revealed the necessity of employee contacts and evaluation

of service experiences.

Parikh (2006) found the problem of reliability in various measures of service quality,

and concluded that perception responses have high reliability as compared to expectation

responses.

Dabholkar, Thorpe and Rentz (1996) discovered the five dimensions of the service

quality.

Service Quality

In the service quality literature, it is generally agreed that different people understand

different things regarding the service quality as a multidimensional notion. Bolton andDrew (1991); and Oliver (1980) defined customers' service quality as the difference

between the actual service performance and their expectations. Similar to Bolton and

Drew (1991); and Oliver (1980), Parasuraman et al. (1988: p19) characterised perceived

service quality as "the degree and direction of discrepancy between customers'perceptions and expectations". The services marketing literature reveals that "service

quality has been variously defined as focusing on meeting needs and requirements, and

how well the service delivered matches customers' expectations" (Lewis 1993: p 22).They also proposed that "service quality is a global consumer judgement or attitude,

relating to service and results from comparisons by consumers expectations of service

with their perception of actual service performance" (Lewis, 1991; p 53).Service quality is the distinction between consumers' expectations for service

performance and their perceptions of the service received. Zeithaml and Bitner (1996, p

45) defined perceived service quality as the judgement of a customer about the overall

3


4/11

excellence or superiority of a product or service. They also defined service quality as,"the delivery of excellent or superior service relative to customer expectations".

Avkiran (1999) identified the following four discriminating factors of service quality in

the banking sector:

Staff Conduct: Responsiveness, civilised conduct and presentation of branch staff

that will project a professional image to the customers.

Credibility: Maintaining bank staff-customer trust by rectifying mistakes, andkeeping customers informed.

Communication: Fulfilling banking needs to customers by successfullycommunicating financial advice and serving notices timely.

Access to Teller Services: The adequacy of number of branch staff serving

customers throughout business hours and during peak hours.

According to Parasuraman (1988) service quality has been defined as the difference

between customer expectations of service to be received and perceptions of the service

actually received.According to Bolton, Drew, 1992; Parasurman 1988; Cronin & Taylor( 1992) quality

is a form of an attitude that results from the comparison of expected service levels with perceived performance In other words, customers enter a consumption experienceexpecting a certain level of service and during this consumption period they experience

actual service performance.

According to Woodruff (1983) Parasurman (1988) Cronin & Taylor (1992), the

consumers subjective evaluation of how well (or poorly) that actual performancecompares to expected performance results in the perceived service quality

According to Reidenbach & Sandifer- Smallwood, 1990; Cronin&Taylor, 1992;

Reichheld & Sasser, 1990-Quality is the component of service satisfaction.According to Bitner & Zeithaml (2003), service quality measurement is important as it

has the potential to offer insights into areas of service quality strengths and weakness.

The overall service quality includes interaction quality, product quality and outcomequality. They also proposed the use the SERVQUAL dimensions to assess a companys

service quality.

Parasuraman (1989) suggested that there are five specific dimensions of service quality

which include-

Reliability: Reliability means ability to perform the promised service dependably

and actually.

Responsiveness: Responsiveness means willingness to help customers andprovide prompt service.

Assurance: It means employees knowledge and courtesy and their ability to

inspire confidence.

Empathy: It means caring, individualized attention given to customers.

Tangibles: It means appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and

written materials.

Social responsibility: Good service at a reasonable cost Staff 's sense of public

responsibility.

According to Lo & Hui, (2003) service quality factors (such as reliability andresponsiveness) are the antecedents to customers overall evaluation of service quality,

rather than conceptualizing them as dimensions or components of the construct.

4


5/11

Reliability and Overall Service Quality

According to Berry, Zeithaml & Parasuraman (1990), service reliability is the service

core to most customers and managers should use every opportunity to build a do-it-

right-first attitude. Especially managers are encouraged to include reliability issues intheir mission statements, set reliability standards, teach the importance of reliability in

training programs, appoint reliability teams to study specific services and recommend

ways to improve reliability, measures error rates and reward error free service.Reliability of service can be better established with a relative emphasis on technology

(high tech) in developed countries and a relative emphasis on personnel (high touch) in

developing countriesAccording to Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1994 building the

management caliber is important for developing the service quality ethics.

Berry and Parsasuraman (1991) identified that continuous improvement is the key toproviding reliable service.

Responsiveness and overall Service Quality

According to Hart, Heskett, & Sasser, 1990; dabholkar, Thorpet Rentz, 1996;Swanson and Kerlley, 2001, service recovery and problem solving have long been

recognized as important parts of service quality Responsiveness was perceived to be themost important dimension as opposed to the reliability from published literature

According to Zenithal (1990), responsiveness perceptions diminish when customers find

difficulties to access a company through telephone and put on hold, or have troubleaccessing the companys website. All these circumstances gradually diminish customers

overall evaluation of service quality.

Tangibility and Overall Service Quality

According to Parasuraman (1990), tangibility refers to the physical evidence of theservice, consisting of physical facilities, appearance of personnel, tools or requirements,

physical presentation of the service, and other customers in the service facility. All of

these provide physical representation or images of the service that both existing and newcustomers will use to evaluate quality.

According to Oberoi and Hales (1990) the importance of tangibles in a conference

hotel is a measure of performance which, when purchased, provides nothing tangible thatthe consumer can posses.

Parasuraman (1988) proposed that consumers perception of tangibles is more

important in the case of hospitals than in security brokerage, and product repair and

maintenance.

Tangibles of service (service scapes) in the banking sector includes the ambient

conditions such as temperature, ventilation, noise and odour prevailing in the bank's premises, extent of the physical layout of equipment and other furnishings being

comfortable for customers to interact with bank staff, visually appealing signs, symbols,

advertisement boards, pamphlets and other artefacts in the bank, bank staff who have aneat and professional appearance, visually appealing materials and facilities associated

with the service etc.

Assurance and Overall Service Quality

5


6/11


7/11

especially in the banking sector. To accomplish this, the study has covered the followingspecific objectives:

1. To evaluate different dimensions of service quality

2. To find out possible approach to examine quality service dimensions

3. To propose an instrument concerning dimensions of service quality

4. To understand and analyze the dimensions customer satisfaction level of the services

provided by the selected branches of the hospitals operating in the city of Jodhpur.

5. To ascertain the relevant dimensions of service quality in hospitals.

6. To frame the strategy for the enhancement of customer satisfaction.

Research Methodology - The researcher contacted the respondents personally with well-

prepared sequentially arranged questionnaire. The questionnaire prepared, was dividedinto two parts, of which part one was used to gather demographic details of the

respondents using the hospital facilities of the Jodhpur city and the second was related to

customer preferences for the various attributes of the services available in the hospitals...

Research Design

7

Demographically classified

customers

age

sex

occupation

LEVEL OF

SATISFACTION

Variables related

To

Customer satisfaction


8/11

Sampling Area - The study is conducted on the respondents i.e. the customers using thebanking facilities of the Jodhpur city

Population

All the customers using the banking facilities of the Jodhpur city.

Sample size The research focused on the participants who willingly wanted tocomplete the instruments in their entirety. Total 100 respondents filled the questionnaire.

Sampling Design The sample was designed by the convenience based random

sampling method.Primary Data - Most of the data collected by the researcher was primary data through

a structured questionnaire, which was operated on the samples of the tourist visiting the

destination of Jodhpura.) Demographic Characteristics- gender, age and occupation of the respondents.

b.) Dimension of customer satisfaction for service facilities

Secondary data- The secondary information was collected from the published Sources

such as Journals, Newspapers and Magazines and websites...

Research instruments - A summated rating scale format was used, with five choices

per item ranging from "completely dissatisfied to "completely satisfied ". . . In this allthe questions were positively framed to study the impact of independent variable like age,

gender and occupation on the dependent variable which is student development through

knowledge.

Analysis of Data - All the data collected from the respondents was feeded and tabulated

and the analysis was done through the software of SPSS version 16...

Research period - The research period of the study has from april 24, 2011 to may 12,2011

Hypothesis

Null hypothesis

H101: There is no significant difference about facilities provided by the banks andcustomer satisfaction amongst customers classified by age coming to the banks of

Jodhpur.

H1a1: There is significant difference about the facilities provided by the banks and theand customer satisfaction amongst customers classified by age coming to the

banks of Jodhpur

H102: There is no significant difference about facilities provided by the banks and

customer satisfaction amongst customers classified by gender coming to the

bankss of Jodhpur.

H1a2: There is significant difference about the facilities provided by the banks and the

and customer satisfaction amongst customers classified by gender coming to the

banks of Jodhpur

H103: There is no significant difference about facilities provided by the banks andcustomer satisfaction amongst customers classified by occupation coming to the

banks of Jodhpur.

H1a3: There is significant difference about the facilities provided by the banks and theand customer satisfaction amongst customers classified by occupation coming to

the banks of Jodhpur

8


9/11

H104: There is no significant difference about facilities provided by the banks and

customer satisfaction amongst customers classified by income coming to the

banks of Jodhpur.

H1a4: There is significant difference about the facilities provided by the banks and theand customer satisfaction amongst customers classified by income coming to the

banks of Jodhpur

Data analysis

1. Anova Linearity and Non-Linearity Test:-

Aim here is to find how Total Satisfaction varies in accordance to change in each

dimension, linearly or non-linearly, here both are scale variables dependent andindependent variable.

The test for linearity if has a significance value smaller than 0.05, indicates that

there is a linear relationship.

The test for deviation from linearity if has a significance value smaller than

0.05, indicates that there is a non-linear relationship. If both relationships are present and if R2


10/11

REFERENCES

1. Avkiran, N.K. (1999), Quality customer service demands human contact,

International

Journal of Bank Marketing, 17, 2, 61-71

2. Berry, L.L. and A. Parasuraman (1991), Marketing Services, The Free Press, New

York.

3. Bloemer, J., K. D. Ruyter, and P. Pascal (1998), Investigating drivers of bank

loyalty:the complex relationship between image, service quality and satisfaction,

The International Journal of Bank Marketing, 16, 7, 276-286.

4. Bolton, R.N. and Drew, J.H. (1991), A longitudinal analysis of the impact of service

changes on customer attitudes, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 55, pp. 1-9.

5. Caruana, A. (2002), service loyalty: The effects of service quality and the mediating

role of customer satisfaction,European Journal of Marketing, 36, 7/8, 811-828.

6. Cronin, J.J. and Taylor, S.A., (1992), "Measuring service quality: a re-examination and

extension",Journal of Marketing, 56, 55-68.

7. Kennor & Taylor (1997), Marketing Research, Wiley Eastern Ltd., p. 440-442.

8. Lewis, B.R. (1991), Service quality: an international comparison of bank customersexpectations and perceptions,Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 7, pp. 47-62.

9. Lewis, B. (1993), Service quality: recent developments in financia l services,

International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 11 No. 6, pp. 19-25.

10. Oliver, R.L. (1980), ``A cognitive model of the antecedents and consequences of

satisfaction decisions,Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. XVII, November, pp.460-469.

11. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. and Berry, L.L. (1988), ``SERVQUAL: a multiple Item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality,Journal of

Retailing, Vol. 64 No. 1, Spring, pp. 12-40.

12.Zeithaml, V.A., Parasuraman, A. and Berry, L.L. (1990), Delivering quality service:Balancing Customer perceptions and expectations, Free Press, New York.

13. Zeithaml, V.A. and Bitner, M.J. (1996), Services Marketing, international edition,McGraw Hill, New York, NY and London.

10


11/11

11

term paper monika ii sem

Documents