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Customer Satisfaction in the Banking Sector

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Customer Satisfaction in the Banking Sector
Customer Satisfaction in the Banking Industry
Case Study – Barclays Bank of Kenya Ltd.

Customer satisfaction is a major issue in almost all sectors. This can basically determine the success and profitability of a company as a satisfied customer would most likely to ‘spread the good word’ or would have be happy to do business again with the firm. It is an important theoretical and practical issue for market researchers and consumer researchers (Meuter et al, 2000). With positive results in most research, the significance of customer satisfaction and customer retention in strategy development for a “market oriented’’ and “customer focused’’ firm cannot be underestimated (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990). Specifically, Levesque and McDougall (1996) stated that customer satisfaction and retention are critical for retail banks, because of their impact on the company’s profit. With this, there is the challenge for banks to deliver a satisfactory quality service. After all, customer satisfaction is inarguably one of the two core concepts that are at the root of the marketing theory and practice (Spreng and Mackoy, 1996). The other one is service quality but it can be said it is not purely intertwined with customer satisfaction as a customer can be satisfied even though the service is not of high quality. But then, customer satisfaction is considered a must for customer retention and loyalty, and undoubtedly helps in realizing economic goals like profitability, market share, return on investment and other corporate target (Reichheld, 1996; Hackl and Westlund, 2000).

This paper presents the proposal to investigate customer satisfaction in the banking industry and link it with the profit of the company. As mentioned, this theory is also plays an important role to banks. The study will focus specifically on the Barclays Bank of Kenya. Barclays is a UK based brand that has made a huge impact on Kenya. The study will look at how Barclays retain and satisfies its customers and what



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