THE EFFECT OF QUALITY SERVICE ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, LOYALTY AND RETENTION IN THE GHANAIAN BANKING INDUSTRY

The concept of customer loyalty has received much consideration and attention from both academics and practitioners in different industries. Customer loyalty is one of the most frequently addressed subjects in the marketing and service literature (Heskett and Sasser, 1994). According to Lin and Wang, (2006), customer satisfaction is one of the major determinants of customer loyalty. In recent years, many companies have adopted total quality management programmes designed to constantly improve the quality of products, services, and market processes. Quality and satisfaction are seen as playing a crucial role for success of every business organization. Service quality and customer satisfaction concepts have been linked to customer behavioural intentions like purchase and loyalty intention, willingness to spread positive word of mouth, referral and complain intention (Olsen, 2002). Commenting on this, Timm (2011), said, “the number one task, regardless of your job title, will always be to attract, satisfy, and preserve loyal customers and that, no one succeeds without loyal customers”. Furthermore, having loyal customers is a great asset to ensure long term growth of a company. It is always more costly to attract new customers than retaining old ones, so managers always try to find ways to retain their current customers and concentrate on different factors which enhance loyalty. This research therefore intends to study the relation of these three concepts, service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty.