RELATIONSHIP MARKETING, CORPORATE BRANDING, SERVICE QUALITY, AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN KENYA
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Date
2024-08-08
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Publisher
UoEm
Abstract
The world over, businesses constantly strive towards the enhancement of customer
satisfaction through heightened competitiveness and improvement of service delivery.
Customer satisfaction is important in the creation and maintenance of competitive
advantage in the banking sector. The realization that there are many economic
advantages ascribed to retaining satisfied customers as opposed to looking for new
customers has made commercial banks pay attention to customer satisfaction in order
to remain competitive. This happens when commercial banks make sure that the
existing customers are satisfied. They do that through relationship marketing to attract
and retain more customers. The general objective of this study was to evaluate the effect
of relationship marketing, corporate branding, and service quality on customer
satisfaction of commercial banks in Kenya. The study was anchored on the
commitment-trust, assimilation, Heider’s balance, and expectation disconfirmation
theories. The study was guided by the positivist philosophy and adopted the explanatory
research design. The target population was the commercial banks customers in Kenya.
A total of 602 customers were sampled proportionately from the 39 commercial banks
in Kenya. The study used a questionnaire as the data collection instrument. Structural
equation modeling was used to ascertain the relationship between the various variables.
The mediation effect of service quality and corporate branding on the relationship
between relationship marketing and customer satisfaction of commercial banks in
Kenya was ascertained using three regression models. The findings of the study
revealed that relationship marketing, service quality, and corporate branding have a
positive and statistically significant relationship with customer satisfaction of the
commercial banks in Kenya. Furthermore, service quality and corporate branding had
a partial mediating effect on the relationship between relationship marketing and
customer satisfaction of commercial banks in Kenya. The study recommends that the
commercial banks in Kenya participate in community activities, reward customers,
adopt biometrics security mechanisms, enhance mobile banking, use modern banking
equipment and appealing banking facilities, hire competent employees, and hold
regular exhibitions of their products and services. The study findings make implications
to policy and practitioners regarding the significance of relationship marketing, service
quality, and corporate branding on customer satisfaction.