|
A
Comparative Study on the Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction
among Private, Public and Foreign Banks
--
Rengasamy Elango and Vijaya Kumar Gudep
The
paper focuses on the service quality and customer satisfaction
among the private, public and foreign banks in India. An analysis
is carried out to examine the level of awareness among customers
and to identify the best sector which provides qualitative
customer service. This becomes relevant in the context of
recommendations of various committees constituted by the Government
of India and the RBI, from time to time, to suggest measures
to improve customer service systems of the public sector commercial
banks of India. A well-structured questionnaire is used to
collect the views of respondents across the three banking
sectors. The survey instrument includes various dimensions,
pertaining to the quality of customer services in terms of
banking personnel, convenient working hours, Web-based services,
error free value-added services and efficient grievance redressal
mechanism etc. Apart from the basic statistical tools such
as measures of central tendency, The authors also use `factor
analysis' and the `One-way Anova' classification. The idea
behind this is to extract the relevant factors and analyze
whether there is any significant difference with respect to
service quality within the three banking sectors. The results
indicate that the level of awareness among the customers improved
significantly during the study period. It is interesting to
note that the results are consistent with the previous studies
conducted on customer service aspects, and it has been observed
that the foreign and the new generation private sector banks
are serving the customers better. This has larger implications
on the public sector commercial banks in India with respect
to customer service delivery aspects. It is high time the
public sector commercial banks made efforts to revamp their
approach towards customers, so as to perform better and derive
competitive advantage in the long run.
©2006
IUP . All Rights Reserved
Service
Failure and Consumer Complaining Behavior: A Factor Analytic
Study
-- Jayasimha K R, R
Nargundkar and V Murugaiah
In
most cases of service failure, consumer complaint is an antecedent
for service recovery. However, past studies have noted that
the propensity of consumers to complain is generally low.
While past studies have identified some factors that might
influence an individual's propensity to complain, a relook
at the consumer complaining behavior, specifically for services
following a service failure, is required. This study attempts
to understand the antecedents and consequences of consumer
complaining. Variables are identified based on an extensive
review of literature and data collected using a cross-sectional
sample. The exploratory Factor Analysis using Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) was conducted to identify the latent factors.
The extracted factors accounted for 70.227% of total variance,
and the Cronbach's Alpha for the extracted factors varied
from 0.756 to 0.475.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
A
Perceptual Study of Surrogate Advertising
--
Subhash Chander and Rishi Raj Sharma
Surrogate
advertising relates to advertising by duplicating the brand
image of a product in order to promote another product of
the same brand, the advertising for which is otherwise banned.
In such advertisements, though the companies directly advertise
a different product, they intend to advertise indirectly,
a banned product such as liquor or tobacco. Consumers associate
such advertisements with the corresponding banned product.
The products are thus indirectly advertised. This, in turn,
would influence the behavior of their audience. This paper
focuses on analyzing the perceptions of the respondents on
'surrogate advertising', an unethical advertising practice,
presently followed by corporates. It concludes that there
exists a significant association between the aided recall
of surrogate advertisements and the brands, with the age of
the respondents. In general, the perceptions that govern the
attitude of respondents towards surrogate advertisements are
more on the negative. Irrespective of the positive perceptions,
majority of the people perceive the phenomena of surrogate
advertising as negative for the societyimmoral and unethical.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Relationship
Marketing: A New Old Concept
--
U Surya Rao and D Ramkumar
Relationship
marketing is a new paradigm that challenges the existing and
entrenched philosophies in marketing literature. Relationship
marketing has created a lot of interest among academics and
practitioners. Although this phenomenon is as old as the history
of trade and commerce, the term, "relationship marketing"
was coind by Leonardo L Beery only two decades ago, in 1983.
Firms are realizing the significance of developing and fostering
sustained relationship with customers. This article explores
the past, present and future of "relationship marketing".
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Garment
Lifestyle Retailing Stores vis-à-vis
Impact of Private Labels: A Paradigm Shift
-- Sharif
S Memon
Retailing
is the single biggest industry, recognized worldwide. Everyday
we see the nuances of retailing coming in, to customers. The
fashion preferences of consumers is also changing with change
in lifestyles. Thus, there is enough room for organized retailers
to come up with new fashion apparels. But it has been noticed
that the well-known brands are still not flexible enough to
tap the emerging fashion. Furthermore, organized retailers
have also come up with their own brands (i.e., private labels),
which have several benefits as they help tap new trends; and
the profit margins on such private labels are also substantially
high. In the long run, private labels enhance the brand equity
of the established retailers. Thus, this paper emphasizes
two aspects; (1) the preference of the lifestyle stores over
the antediluvian stores that encompass the general merchandise;
(2) the promotion of private labels by organized retailers
over the well-known brands, and customers' attitude for such
private labels.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
The
Impact of Television Advertisements on Youth: A Study
-- S John Gabriel
"Today's
youth are no fools and are far more sophisticated than they
were 20 years ago, when many of today's youth advertising
guidelines were written", says Jerry Mc Gee who ran perhaps
the largest advertising agency. Marketing to the youth is
a delicate issue. Because of the combination of color, sound
and action, television attracts more viewers than any other
medium (with the exception of cinema).
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Media
Usage Behavior of the College-goers of Kolkata in the Era
of Globalization: A Psychographic Stydy
--
Paromita
Goswami
A
marketer needs to communicate with his target audience. This
communication with the target audience is facilitated by understanding
the activities, interests and opinions of consumers and the
different groups of audiences who have similarity in media
usage. This paper (i) groups the products and services purchased
by the college-goers themselves in terms of purchase frequency;
(ii) explores the media usage behavior of the college-goers
of Kolkata in terms of newspapers, movies and television programs;
(iii) identifies whether the product and service groups are
associated with specific media usage; and (iv) tries to understand
the relationship between the number of hours of television
viewing and programs watched, as well as the relationship
between the number of hours of television viewing and psychographic
dimensions.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
|
