CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
The growing sophistication of consumer needs and wants amidst fierce competition in the banking sector in Nigeria has made it inevitable for customers to continually look out for service providers that could address and satisfy their needs. It is believed that the goal of every organization is to meet the needs and the requirements of its stakeholders. Meeting the needs and the requirements of the stakeholders will not only ensure the survival of the organization but also allow it to flourish.
Customers are presumed to be one of the most important stakeholders in
any organization because without them, organizations are not likely to succeed
(Babatunde & Olukemi 2012). However, with the development in Information,
and Communication Technology (ICT) customers are faced with myriad of choices,
in making selections between service providers. In the same vein Oliver (1997)
observed that it is not unusual for a customer to make comparison between
differences in perceived expectation and perceived performance which is known
as disconfirmation. As a result customer attrition sets in, in which customers
may be engaged in switching back and forth between product and service offering
in a bid to get quality services that satisfy their needs and wants.
Satisfaction is a person‟s expression of pleasure or disappointment resulting from comparing a service outcome in relation to the expectations (Schiff Iman
- Kanuk 2007). Hence, it implies that if performance falls below expectation, the customer is dissatisfied. Where the performance matches the expectations, the customer is satisfied. Peradventure the performance exceeds expectations; the customer is highly satisfied or delighted. In other words, satisfaction is a subjective concept based on the customer‟s evaluation of what he or she needs or wants during an interaction process with a bank.
Kotler (2009) observed that whether the customer is satisfied or dissatisfied after purchase depends on the service performance in relation to the customer‟s expectation. Customer satisfaction is one of the fundamental aspects of keeping key relationships between a bank and its customers; hence it provides an essential link between cumulative purchase and post-purchase phenomena in terms of attitude change, repeat purchase and brand loyalty (Churchill & Surprenant, 1982).
Equivocally, loyal customers are asset to a bank as each bank strives to retain its customers; customer retention is one of the key components in service marketing in that for a bank to retain its customers, the customer must be satisfied with the product / service offering by the bank which will reduce the defection rate. This describes customers who transfer their brand loyalty to another service provider. Reichheld and Sasser(1996) popularized the term zero defections to mean the ability to keep every customer the organization canserve profitably.
However, a rising defection rate indicates that something is wrong with the product quality (or that competitor‟s offer better value), it may also be a leading indicator signaling a fall in profits. Big customers do not necessarily disappear overnight; they often may signal their mounting dissatisfaction by steadily reducing their patronage and shifting part of their business to the bank‟s competitors and this could be as a result of the quality of services offered by a bank as being below expectation by the customer. Thus Service quality has a positive influence on customer satisfaction (Yee, Yeung, & Cheng 2010).
DOWNLOAD COMPLETE PROJECT MATERIALS
IMPACT OF QUALITY SERVICE DELIVERY ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN DEPOSIT MONEY BANKS IN NIGERIA
