Customer Loyalty as Construct in the Marketing of Banking Services

Customer Loyalty as Construct in the Marketing of Banking Services

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to expand the boundaries of our knowledge by exploring some relevant facts and figures relating to analysis of “Customer Loyalty as Construct in the Marketing of Banking Services”. One of the basic elements of modern marketing understanding is customer satisfaction. Businesses can survive as long as they can meet the customers' needs and enable customer satisfaction. Determining the consumer's wishes and needs and meeting them is one of the ways of enabling consumer satisfaction. For this reason, it is pretty important in our intensively competitive environment to be in regular contact with the customers and to follow the changes in them closely. One of the sectors in which competition is experienced intensively is that of banking. Banks are the finance institutions that meet the economic needs of the individuals and businesses and that perform such economic activities as collecting bank deposits, giving credits, providing capital, and etc. In recent years there have appeared important developments in the understanding of modern banking. With the transition to automation, customer satisfaction and management of customer relationships have taken place among the subjects spoken of in the banking sector.

Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty

Customer satisfaction means that customer needs, wishes and expectations are met or overcome during the product/service period, giving way to re-purchasing and customer loyalty. (Anton, 1996: 23) In other words, “customer satisfaction is the assessment of the pre-purchasing expectations from the product, with the results reached after the act of purchasing.” (Lemon et al, 2002: 1). A highly satisfied customer;

continues his shopping for a long time,

buys more as long as the firm produces new products and the existing products are improved,

speaks of the firm and its products with praise,

keeps indifferent to the trademarks that are in competition with the products of the firm and does not

place the emphasis on the price,

and offers the firm suggestions and ideas about products and services.

It is possible to secure the customer loyalty through customer satisfaction. However, the fact that there are many enterprises that offer products and services of the same quality and at the same price interval makes it difficult for the enterprises to secure customer satisfaction. It may even be easy to let the satisfied customer go to the rival enterprises. Today the most important thing to do about the reduced customer satisfaction is the customer-centered practices adapted to each customer's needs and values. By treating different customers in different manners, firms can achieve customer loyalty (Lemon et al, 2002). Customer loyalty is the long and uninterrupted retention of the relationship by offering service that meets and even goes beyond the customer needs (Anton, 1996).

Customer loyalty is defined with consideration paid to the amount of buying for a given trademark. The level of loyalty is measured by the watching of the frequency of buying (Javalgi and Moberg, 1997: 165). With the increase in the amount of accessible information in ...