The Relationship Between Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty: An Investigation in Vietnamese Retail Banking Sector
The Relationship Between Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty: An Investigation in Vietnamese Retail Banking Sector
The Relationship Between Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty: An Investigation in Vietnamese Retail Banking Sector
Key words: service quality, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, banking, competitive and mediators.
JEL Classification: M10, M20, M31
1. INTRODUCTION
It might be well accepted nowadays that intensive competitiveness in terms of both quantity
and quality makes it extremely difficult for a firm to differentiate itself from its competitors.
Moreover, dynamic business environments and increasing customer power have pushed firms
toward a customer-focused strategy, especially using new technology to build relationships with
the customer (Ryding, 2010). As a result, excellent business processes and intangible assets such
as brands, customer satisfaction, and powerful human resources might become the most es-
sential sources of sustainable competitive advantages (Chien & Tsai, 2012; Teece, 2007; Wang
& Ahmed, 2007). These fundamental changes, together with the invisible and hard-to-observe
characteristics of qualitative/non-financial measures, have raised the questions of whether non-
financial measures such as customer satisfaction and job satisfaction have real and significant
effects on firm performance and how they do it. Among them, customer loyalty has been consid-
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3.2 Measures
For this study, the measurement scales and the indicators are adopted from previous studies.
These measurements scales are validated in prior researches, especially in the context of finan-
cial service (Brady et al., 2002; Colgate & Lang, 2001; Cronin Jr., Brady, & Hult, 2000; Jones,
Mothersbaugh, & Beatty, 2000). Modifications and translations are made to transform the meas-
urement scale to be readable for average retail banking customer in Vietnam and reflect the
context of the retail banking industry in Vietnam. In general, the respondents are asked to give
their agreement or disagreement with the statement. Respondents give their opinion for each
statement through 7-point Likert scale with 1 to indicate “strongly disagree” and 7 to indicate
“strongly agree”.
In order to investigate the mediating role of customer satisfaction in the service quality- loyalty
relationship, the service quality is approached as an overall construct. Therefore, four items for
measuring overall service quality construct adopted from Brady et al. (2002) are used. Three
items which are adopted from Cronin et al. (2000) are used to measure the overall customer
satisfaction. There items are used to measure the customer loyalty including 1 item about the
word-of-mouth intention and 2 items about repurchase intention. These three items are also
adopted from Cronin et al. (2000).
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Customer
satisfaction
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Tab. 3 - Standardized path coefficients of the structural model. Source: Own research
Tab. 4 - Bootstrapping results for testing mediation effects. Source: Own research
5. DISCUSSION
Our findings contribute to the discussion about the complex interrelationship between service
quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. This study provides empirical evidence of
their relations to each other as proposed in the research model. This study adopts the view that
the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty is complex
and contributes new empirical evidence of these interrelationships. The major contribution of
this study is to bring up some of the most popular constructs in the relationship marketing
literature, namely, service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty, together in order
to test their interrelationships in a very different context. Most of the previous research studies
about their interrelationships have been conducted in Western and developed countries, which
are generally recognized as having many differences from Eastern and developing countries in
terms of cultures and customers’ needs, which are the basis for the relationship between cus-
tomers and service providers. Vietnam, as an Asian country and developing economy, has very
specific characteristics differentiating it from other contexts used in previous studies to examine
the interrelationship between service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. First,
for historical reasons, the Vietnamese economy has been experiencing a transformation from a
state-controlled economy to a market-driven economy for just over 20 years. Because of this fact,
the premises of competitive advantages and relationship marketing in particular are new prac-
tices for both companies and customers in Vietnam. Nevertheless, this study shows that they
are applicable to the Vietnamese context regarding the interrelationship between service quality,
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